Massively underappreciated sci-fi horror with gut-punch ending streaming on Netflix now

Stephen Porzio

With its unforgettable imagery and thrilling set-pieces, this is a movie that gets better with each viewing.

There was a time around the late 2000s/early 2010s when ambitious, intellectual science fiction stories were all the rage at the cinema.

Around then, we had such box-office hits as Arrival, Deja Vu, District 9, Ex Machina, I Am Legend, In Time, Inception, Interstellar, Looper, The Martian, Monsters, Moon and Source Code.

While the level of hard sci-fi in each of these movies varies, all in some way or another risked being too esoteric in their ideas and presentation and were not guaranteed to find financial success.

They did, however, often times helped by great word-of-mouth and also their intriguing science fiction stories and worlds.

This is probably what made author turned writer-director Alex Garland’s sophomore effort Annihilation feel like such a viable proposition.

Not only was it based on the acclaimed 2014 novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer – one with a very cool premise – Garland also wrote and directed Ex Machina and worked on the scripts for a bunch of other noteworthy sci-fi movies like 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go and Dredd. What could go wrong?

A loose adaptation of the book, with the filmmaker putting his own spin on the material, Annihilation stars Natalie Portman as Lena – a former US soldier turned cellular biologist.

She is married to Kane (Oscar Isaac), a fellow soldier she met while serving who is missing and presumed dead after a mysterious mission that the authorities won’t tell Lena about.

One day though – as Lena cries alone in her house as ‘Helplessly Hoping’ by Crosby, Stills, and Nash plays (a gorgeous sequence) – a severely sick Kane shows up on her doorstep and the pair are quickly whisked away to a secret government facility.

It turns out that three years previously, a meteor struck a lighthouse in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. The space rock then altered the area, creating a large mysterious bubble around it dubbed The Shimmer, which is gradually expanding and increasing its boundaries.

The government have sent a dozen military teams into the quarantined area – where compasses and communication technology can’t function – but only one person has returned: Kane.

Now, the authorities have a different approach. They want to send a group of female scientists into The Shimmer to study it. Lena volunteers in order to find a way of saving her husband.

Teaming with psychologist Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), physicist Josie (Tessa Thompson) and geomorphologist Cass (Tuva Novotny), the five venture into the strange area that they quickly realise functions by its own rules and poses a huge threat to humanity.

Clearly inspired by the work of horror author H.P. Lovecraft, as well as the influential Russian sci-fi film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, Garland stages enough horrifying and tense and honestly unforgettable sequences to make Annihilation worth seeking out for even casual movie fans.

Lurking within the confines of The Shimmer lies all kinds of monstrous threats from mutated – to be even more scary – alligators and bears, as well as tumorous flowers and strange doppelgangers that mirror the movements of the people they seek to destroy.

At the same time, Garland does keep viewers compelled by the broader mysteries: What actually is The Shimmer? What did it do to Kane and his team? Questions he does eventually provide answers for.

That being said, he does also load the film with other interesting ideas, questions and enigmas for which answers are more elusive. This is something which may be frustrating for audiences upon a first watch but do make Annihilation linger long after the end credits and fascinating to revisit.

Without spoiling how The Shimmer plays into this, the main theme of the movie is humanity’s predilection to annihilate itself – both in the fact that our cells are designed to die someday, but also in how people often commit acts of self-destruction.

For instance, Lena is guilt-ridden for having an affair with a colleague (David Gyasi) during the long periods where Kane was away from her because of work. The biologist fears the affair drove her soldier husband into taking part in his expedition into The Shimmer, which was essentially a suicide mission.

Ventress, the psychologist and leader of the group, basically lays out the thesis of the movie during this interaction with Lena:

Lena: Why did my husband volunteer for a suicide mission?

Ventress: Is that what you think we’re doing? Committing suicide?

Lena: You must have profiled him. You must have assessed him. He must have said something.

Ventress: So you’re asking me as a psychologist?

Lena: Yeah.

Ventress: Then, as a psychologist, I think you’re confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide, and almost all of us self-destruct. In some way, in some part of our lives. We drink, or we smoke, we destabilise the good job… and a happy marriage. But these aren’t decisions, they’re… they’re impulses. In fact, you’re probably better equipped to explain this than I am.

Lena: What does that mean?

Ventress: You’re a biologist. Isn’t the self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?

Obviously, a movie properly grappling with ideas such as these is not only going to be intellectual, but also gloomy and sombre – something which seems to have caused Garland a major issue when it came to distributing the film.

Though Annihilation sounds wildly commercial on paper, it has a tone and vibe that – while destined to attract a cult devout following – could alienate a portion of its audience.

It’s this that reportedly turned off the owner of Skydance, one of Annihilation’s production companies, David Ellison (Geostorm, Terminator Genisys), who is said to have found the movie “too intellectual” and “too complicated”.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, sources claim that Ellison wanted Garland to make changes so that the movie could potentially appeal to a wider audience. These reportedly include making Portman’s character more likeable (thus defeating the big theme of the film) and also “tweaking the ending”, perhaps to make it less dark and enigmatic (and thus, less interesting).

The outlet, however, also states that Ellison did not have final cut on the project – with Annihilation’s producer Scott Rudin siding with Garland, meaning no alterations were made.

The alleged disagreement though seemed to effect the movie’s distribution, with distributor Paramount then believing that the whole endeavour had “certain box office ceilings”.

As such, they sold the international rights of Annihilation to Netflix, which was why it did not get the cinema release in the UK that it deserved and that Garland wanted – “We made the film for cinema,” the filmmaker said.

This, as well as Garland’s divergence from the source material, is probably a factor as to why we also didn’t get adaptations of the Annihilation novel’s sequels: Authority and Acceptance.

The Netflix deal does have its benefits though. The movie has always been available to stream in the UK, which is great because Annihilation is one of those cool cult films with one foot in the mainstream and one foot in the arthouse that rewards multiple viewings – getting better with each one.