Annihilation

 

The movie “Annihilation” is a science fiction horror film in which a mysterious meteorite from outer space hits the Earth near a Lighthouse.   Slowly the surrounding area transforms into an other-worldly environment surrounded by a shimmering electromagnetic field.  The heroine’s husband is attached to a team of military and scientific types and ordered to investigate.

 

A year later, the husband unexpectedly appears at the family home in deteriorating health and requiring immediate hospitalization.  Despite best efforts, they are immediately intercepted by government agents who are as surprised by his arrival as she was.   Apparently everyone else from the expedition is missing and he is the only survivor ever to return.

 

The heroine is then recruited as part of another, but this time an all-woman, expedition.   As they enter the “shimmer”, they discover that time has drastically slowed down and everything in sight is rapidly mutating, including their own biology.

 

They encounter various mutated beasts which eat most of the cast but eventually the heroine alone manages to reach the lighthouse.   From there the plot switches from nearly inscrutable to hairbrained.    She discovers a video camera with footage of her husband asking someone off screen to go find her just before he blows himself up.   The team leader who was thought lost appears and, after predicting the end of the world, transforms into an exact copy of the heroine.

 

The heroine manages to destroy the copy of herself and the “shimmering” area disappears.  Afterwards when reunited with her husband both have shimmering lights in their eyes.

 

In general terms, the plot is poorly developed, the motivations of everyone murky at best, any sympathy for individual cast members close to non-existent, and the ending amorphous and incoherent and unsatisfying.   Although the special effects are excellent and award winning cast are unusually attractive, they do not compensate for the structural defects.  And so I could not recommend the mental stress of viewing this disaster.