THIS SCI-FI SQUAD RULES!
Natalie Portman and a team of female scientists fight for the future — and to stay alive
Alot of weird stuff happens in the swamps of Florida, but “Annihilation” really takes it to the next level. Alex Garland, writer/director of the claustrophobic android-horror film “Ex Machina,” goes macro in this tale of a marshland-devouring ecological anomaly dubbed the Shimmer. No one knows what it is; they know only that everyone who goes in disappears.
Except, that is, for Kane (Oscar Isaac), a long-missing soldier who shows up at home, surprising his grieving wife Lena (Natalie Portman) and acting very strange. Soon he’s vomiting blood and being whisked away to a top-secret facility, along with Lena, who learns not only that her husband’s the sole survivor of an expedition to the Shimmer — but that he’s dying.
It’s been a while since Portman’s had a meaty part, and she chomps into her role as a former-soldier-turned-biologyprof determined to find a cure. She’s well-matched by the rest of the cast, mostly consisting of the four women accompanying her into the Shimmer. Jennifer Jason Leigh, as psychologist Dr. Ventress, seems to be aging into a Clint Eastwood type: She’s so deadpan she barely opens her mouth. Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson and Swedish actress Tuva Novotny all shine as low-drama scientists gradually driven toward madness by the physicsdefying developments inside the bubble.
Garland — and presumably his source material, Jeff VanderMeer’s novel — resists the urge to uniformly demonize the unknown, although horror lurks around each flowery corner. The rainbow hues of the Shimmer, and the riotously colored flora and fauna inside it, resemble an alien-inflected Mardi Gras. As one charac- ter points out, from the perspective of whatever’s in charge here — it’s not necessarily destroying, it’s “creating something new.” Unfortunately, that’s at the expense of humans, and there are some seriously gnarly encounters as team members are picked off by animal hybrids, such as a nightmarish bear whose roar is imbued with the screams of its previous victims.
This is an unapologetically nerdy film, too, one that relishes the delicate grace of cell division seen under a microscope. There’s even a shout-out to “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” the book whose true story about cancerous cells is echoed in this plot about genetics gone haywire. In pondering the limits of humans’ knowledge, and their fallibility, “Annhilation” also shares some DNA with 2016’s “Arrival.”
There are momentsthat left me wanting more: Brief hints about time being wonkyinside the Shimmerare dropped. TheCGIis frequently iffy. Garland’s direction occasionally has a curious lack of drama, as if, in his effort to avoid being over-thetop, he’s gone too far in the opposite direction.
But it’s refreshing to see a sci-fi movie about a team on a virtual suicide mission so devoid of chest-thumping theatrics. Garland doesn’t focus on them being women — aside from a curt acknowledgment of previous male teams’ tendency to vanish, it’s never really discussed — but there’s a slightly different dynamic at work. A brief exchange takes a new line on the nature of martyrish heroism: “We’re all damaged goods here,” says Novotny’s scientist.
Ambitious and messy, “Annhilation” will likely leave you with more questions than answers. Mine is: “When can I see it again?”
ANNIHILATION DNAaaaaaagh. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated R (violence, profanity, sex). Now playing.