'Annihilation' Review

Genetic limits

Annihilation is one of those films I can totally see why some people really dig. For one thing, it looks pretty damn good - impeccable art direction color-matching the rote and man-made with pastel alien strangeness, striking imagery and well-composed shots which juxtapose cosmic enormity with intimate grounding. More than that, however, the film isn't stupid. It's not some generic "bug hunt" ninety minutes of concentrated machine gun fire - it's a thoughtful film, morosely cerebral in expounding its titular extended metaphor of an explicable basal desire to destroy the self. Unfortunately, perhaps the film stands too dedicated to that extended metaphor, choosing nebulous bits of quasi-worldbuilding as the primary vessels for extrapolating the synecdochical phenomenon, rather than the actual humans whose nature we're attempting to unravel. Come Act 3, the lead character is no longer Natalie Portman’s soldier-scientist, but the setting and its unknown knowingness, rather than how the two interlace or expose the vulnerabilities in one another. One could never consider all the parts and pieces to be without purpose, but by surrendering its human elements, the film forfeits the ability for its deeper themes to resonate in a relatable (or even cogent) manner; the end result is a film I feel as though I watched from a distance rather than in the sense of any proper investment. The mind thinks, but so does the heart, and divorcing the two is a surefire way to senesce what could have otherwise been a fictional touchstone for years to come - an ironic fate for that which is meant to embody a sempiternal truth.