I wanted to like this movie going in. This is a $40 million hard science-fiction film!  And like the best science fiction filmmaking, Annihilation is atmospheric, visually driven and intellectually dense. This is very much down my alley. I wish Hollywood would greenlight a dozen of these each year.

Having read the novel by Jeff Vandermeer, I was intrigued throughout by a lot of choices director Alex Garland made when adapting the story. He abandoned all narrative devices that are language based – hypnotism, found journals, organic writing on the walls – and instead attempted to reroute as much information through the visuals. Nevertheless, the script is full of unnecessary exposition, but I was willing to look past this due to the fantastic cast. Portman and Isaac are the standouts, but the whole team of women have their moments. Getting Black Panther and this film back-to-back is proof of how rejuvenating minority led casts can be. Unfortunately, these positives were not enough to push this movie over the top for me.

In theory, the end offers much to discuss. But in the aftermath of Annihilation, what I find most interesting about director Alex Garland and his first two directing projects (this and 2015’s Ex Machina) is how much the central organism at the heart of these two films have in common. Ava and The Shimmer are mimics/replicants of human nature; Ava being a coded AI, trying to win her freedom as an intelligent life form; The Shimmer as an alien life form, ambiguously attempting to recode/replicate Earth’s biology. Both organisms are more or less successful and yet, there is no question for the viewer that they are not the same as humans. Compare this to Garland. He’s a director who is boldly trying to make the next science fiction classic. It’s coded into the DNA of his films with their plethora of synthesized references and images. From film history alone, he’s compositing Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Cronenberg, Carpenter and Scott. He studiously replicated it all and yet, just like Ava and The Shimmer, there is something completely inauthentic about the entire enterprise.