Sci-fi sisterhood arrives
Natalie Portman, Gina Rodriguez and Tessa Thompson say their latest thriller ‘Annihilation’, out now, is a lyrical one
Onscreen in the sci-fi odyssey Annihilation, an expedition ventures deep into a foreboding terrain known only as Area X, carrying guns and harbouring mounting suspicions about one another.
These soldiers — a psychologist (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a biologist (Natalie Portman), a paramedic (Gina Rodriguez), a physicist (Tessa Thompson) and an anthropologist (Tuva Novotny) — enter what is about to become a living, breathing nightmare, an environmental disaster zone without scientific explanation, as filtered through the mind of Ex Machina director Alex Garland, adapting the first book in Jeff Vander-Meer’s Southern Reach trilogy.
The fact that they’re all complex and dimensional female characters is at once trailblazing and, refreshingly, perfectly normalised.
“Each of the women have their own destructive behaviour,” said Portman, who brings steely intensity to the role of Lena, the biologist with her own reasons for volunteering for the dangerous mission. “I find that so beautiful. That’s the greatest science fiction, when the psychological becomes externalised.
“And to have five women at the centre of this expedition — we’re so used to seeing five men going and doing something together, it’s not even questioned why it’s always all men. To give that same kind of attitude to five women is really unique.”
The sisterhood struck on the London set of Annihilation is still strong between Portman, Rodriguez and Thompson, reunited in a suite at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel ahead of the film’s Los Angeles world premiere. Sitting side by side on a couch with their legs curled up, the camaraderie came flooding back in waves of laughter and mutual admiration.
“I feel like [Annihilation] is the kind of movie where if you’ve seen it only once you haven’t seen it,” said Thompson.
Part philosophical sci-fi, part psychedelic-existential fever dream, Annihilation pulses with the looming unease of the unknown. That unknown lurks in the darkness of the vast swamplands and marshes of the Southern Reach, marked by the beauty and horrors of nature run amok.
Thompson found a deep connection to her character Josie’s growing link with the mutations the group encounters as they get closer to the inexplicable veil of energy known as The Shimmer.
“There was something in it that I was really struck by in the destruction of the Earth, of how we treat the other things that are not human — the planet,” she said. “At a certain point with the destruction that we do, we will not have the technology to undo it or to even understand it.”