But instead of Amy Adams as a linguist, Natalie Portman plays Lena, a biologist who is paired with four other women and sent into Area X to investigate the strange goings-on inside its perimeter. (Netflix)Īnnihilation forcefully reminded me of Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 classic, Arrival, a film with which it shares many thematic similarities in addition to a strong female protagonist. Annihilation is imaginatively shot by Alex Garland’s Ex Machina cinematographer, Rob Hardy. No sooner has he sat down, he falls violently ill, prompting his wife, Lena (played by Natalie Portman) to agree to enter Area X and get to the bottom of the mystery, and to find a way to stop it from expanding. And then, one day, a solitary expedition member returns home, visibly blank as to what happened during his time inside Area X. Several expeditions were conducted to investigate Area X, but no one lived to tell the tale. Three years ago, a mysterious event, speculated to be anything from an alien invasion to an act of God, caused all forms of life around a marshy stretch of land along the sea to mutate - to grow, to evolve, to change. In the film, a team of four scientists is sent into an area known only as Area X, which is where the Shimmer exists. Natalie Portman is part of a team that appears to have no reason to live. So when glorious shards of anamorphic lens flares are smeared across the screen - which happens very, very often - it’s more than just empty style, it’s visual storytelling. It is also, quite literally, about a strange force known as ‘The Shimmer’ that causes the ‘refraction of DNA’. Annihilation deals with complex, challenging themes such as the imperfection of nature and the mistakes human beings are so prone to make. You see, flares happen when light hits the lens and essentially refracts. In each of these cases - from the inadvertent hexagons that appear in Easy Rider to the shards of blue in Super 8 - the flares themselves are little more than superficial embellishments, made perhaps to evoke nostalgia, or - and this is more likely - just to appear cool.īut in Alex Garland’s Kubrickian new film, Annihilation, which was made available worldwide on Netflix (more on this later), the filmmaker’s (over)use of flares has real, textual relevance.
There is, however, one key point that must be made. Lens flares have textual import in Annihilation. You see flares everywhere from the latest Taylor Swift video to the sleekest new Apple ad. More recently, lens flares have become almost omnipresent in sci-fi movies, to the point that there are even apps available for your phone using which you can create alien invasions in your living rooms. Visit megaphone.Soon, flares were popularised as a deliberate stylistic choice by Steven Spielberg, and in the years that followed, by his many admirers, most famously directors like Michael Bay and JJ Abrams. More about Annihilation For more info on Annihilation, you can visit the Annihilation IMDB page here or the Annihilation Totten Tomatoes page here.įinal Plug! Subscribe, Share and Review us on iTunes If you enjoyed this episode of Flixwatcher Podcast you probably know other people who will like it too! Please share it with your friends and family, review us, and join us across ALL of the Social Media links below. What do you guys think? Have you seen Annihilation? What did you think? Please let us know in the comments below!Įpisode #072 Crew Links Thanks to the Episode #072 Crew of John Beyond The Box Find their website online here : Please make sure you give them some loveįlixwatcher Spotify Playlist It has to be Putting on the Ritz, but there is no Gene Wilder version so we have added the Mel Torme Version! Scores Annihilation scores particularly high on recommendability but lower on the small screen score (not surprising) and overall a very respectable 4.04. Ex Machina part 2 this is not and it largely divided critics and audiences equally on its release - this is not your conventional film. Rare for a science fiction film the main ensemble is all female, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson and Tuva Novotn (Oscar Issac and Benedict Wong are minor characters) are on a part rescue, part exploration and part suicide mission into a mysterious shimmer with freaky bears and crazy DNA. Annihilation was not intended to be a straight to Netflix release and this is evident is the vast cinema landscape the film inhabitants but it’s is cinemas loss and Netflix’s gain. It’s Episode 72! Beyond the Boxset’s Harry and John return for Harry’s choice the 2018 science fiction fantasy from genius Alex Garland, Annihilation.
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