Annihilation

Damsels in distress slightly differently. Sophisticated chamber slow (you will feel it is twice as long; but it's not a complaint) second-rate movie, where, however, everyone behaves logically and appropriately in given situations and which takes the same from Strugacky as from Things and Arrival. But surprisingly little of VanderMeer's original. On the one hand, the scenes are both captivating and disturbing, atmosphere is dense. On the other hand, it is supposed to be a hardcore sci-fi movie that is rich in interpretation and that has dimension overlap. And I am not at all sure whether it is justified and or whether the movie is just pretending to be that way or if it is just banal. In any case, (not only) for these reasons, it will make you wonder about staff, that´s fur sure. The movie will not get out of your head as soon as you see closing credits. (12/03/2018)

Set in a green rainforest (and on a beach), Annihilation is a more intellectual version of The Thing. It has a rather mainstream theme with a slightly B-movie nature but interesting ideas, escalated into a hitherto unseen close encounter of the third kind, fascinating by its far-reaching imagination and a provocative need to find as many answers as possible in it. The final scene is a return to genre rules, but it turns out well. Garland is not a hitmaker, but rather a hard-core sci-fi filmmaker. While Arrival was about the relativity of the perception of time, Annihilation is about the relativity of biological lifeforms. Totally different, but in both cases brilliant, innovative sci-fi works, ambitious in their content. (24/12/2018)

Thanks God Garland didn’t make Arrival. Thanks to this, it did not lose its humanistic subtext and rational explanation, something that cannot be said about Annihilation. The surrealistic wandering through fantastic landscapes, decorated with brilliant set design and minimalistic music, is beautiful to watch and listen to, but the story is at times a survival, at times a parade of CGI monsters, and a nondescript finale. Sure, we don't always need a literal interpretation, but if it's WTF, it would kinda sting. Garland is a tinkerer of technology, a master of atmosphere and slow-burn stories about a few characters, but here he gets too wrapped up in the themes. There’re still a few brilliant directorial ideas, though. (14/05/2018)

I appreciate Garland for one thing: how he is able to seduce critics, through his bloated and, in this case, nonsensical B-movie, to write about sci-fi masterpieces. Which is the case of a film that looks quite bad on television and is vague everywhere where it should be concrete and concrete everywhere where it should be vague. Truly a daring film. (14/03/2018)

It’s great that Netflix, as part of its sci-fi mission, shoots stories that are part of the current new weird novel trend. I actually discovered the author of the source novel – Jeff VanderMeer a few months ago in the form of his book Veniss Underground and I was fascinated by his brutal surrealism. In case of Annihilation, it’s not that obvious but still similar. Had Giger been still alive and participated in the creation of this movie like he did in the case of Alien, it might have been a unique work. It’s still quite decent as it is, though. I was ecstatic even though I’d have appreciated more visual ideas in that bubble. (16/04/2020)