Visit to another world
How a real-life environmental disaster inspired a freaky mystery in ‘Annihilation’
DEER have branches for antlers, crystal trees sprout from sand, plants are shaped like people, and it’s all encased behind a bubbling rainbow wall. Welcome to the peculiar world of “Annihilation.”
The sci-fi film, in theaters Feb. 23, stars Natalie Portman as Lena, a biologist whose husband (Oscar Isaac) returns home ill and not himself after having disappeared for a bit. It turns out he was recruited to explore the mysterious Area X, and now Lena must go there to try to find a way to help him.
Written and directed by Alex Garland (“Ex Machina”), “Annihilation” is a visual feast, chock-full of bizarre imagery. Inside Area X, the laws of nature do not apply, and the farther you go into “the Shimmer,” as it’s called, the stranger things appear.
The movie’s based on Florida author Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel of the same name. He tells The Post that Area X was inspired by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
“Floridians were feeling very threatened that there might be this catastrophe that was going to be even larger than it was,” he says.
Garland translated the novel to the screen by researching photographs of unnerving but real occurrences in nature, such as a tree completely covered in spiderwebs or abandoned cars overtaken by kudzu vines. One point of particular interest was vegetation found near the nuclear-disaster sites of Fukushima and Chernobyl. Garland’s team re-created some of those mutated plants, such as daisies that had morphed into caterpillar-like shapes.
“It was about trying to construct images that could be beautiful and seductive, but also sinister at the same time,” Garland tells The Post.
The film takes place in the marshlands of Florida, but Garland chose to shoot it in several English parks.
“We felt that if we shot in England, it would sort of broadly be right, but there would be subtle things that felt wrong,” Garland explains. “And that is essentially the quality we were looking for.”
Roughly three-quarters of the flora seen in the film were naturally occurring on location, while the remaining quarter was created by Garland’s team, often out of plastic with metal frames and overlaid with digital magic. That’s how orchids can grow right alongside dandelions, and fungi in striking pastel colors can climb trees among the swampy greens.
The fauna is just as confounding. Early on, Lena encounters an alligator with shark’s teeth, and one beast later in the film has a terrifying characteristic unlike any audiences have seen before.
Garland says the use of light was a critical element to the film. He used two different cameras with different sensors — one for outside of the Shimmer and one for inside of it — for a muted variation of its vibe. Light also played a factor in the digital design of the Shimmer’s rainbow wall, which looks something like soapy water.
But as the plot unfolds, it becomes clear that all of this visual spectacle serves a real purpose, tying into the emotional journey of the characters.
“It’s something that’s actually very personal,” says VanderMeer. “You feel it in your body. I [came] out of the movie [and] all my muscles were sore because I was so tense all the way through.
“It’s not just eye candy.”