Deep-thinking elements make ‘Annihilation’ better suited for DVD

“Annihilation” ★★★

Some movies work better once they are available on DVD, and this is one of them. Director/writer Alex Garland’s adaptation of Jeff Vander Meer’s novel forces the viewer to mentally engage with the story in an effort to decipher the psychological and scientific riddles. It will help to be able to move forward and backward in the story to see how the threads start, stop and then begin in a completely different direction.

All of this unfolds through Lena (Natalie Portman), a former soldier and biologist, who is shocked when her missing husband (Oscar Isaac) comes home near death after a top-secret mission into an area known as The Shimmer. It is a quarantined zone where all life is going through unexplainable transformations and only one person who has entered the area has returned.

Lena, driven by understanding what happened to her husband, is part of an elite team that goes into the beautiful but deadly world of mutated landscapes and creatures. What she finds changes her perspective on life.

Be patient with the film as it unfolds slowly with grace and big visions. “Annihilation” goes against the current norm in sci-fi movies in that there are no big explosions or massive special effects. This is a movie that is more about grand ideas than grand explosions.