Annihilation (2018 movie) Trailer
Directed by Alex Garland and starring Natalie Portman, this adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's novel arrived as one of the more genuinely strange films to come out of mainstream production in years.
Garland shoots the interior of the Shimmer, a quarantined coastal zone warped by an unknown phenomenon, as something between a fever dream and a nature documentary gone wrong. The horror, when it arrives, is biological and deeply wrong in ways that linger.
A biologist joins a classified expedition into a mysterious, ever-expanding zone where the laws of nature no longer apply. Previous teams have not returned, or have returned changed. She carries her own reasons for volunteering, reasons the film parcels out carefully.
The film adapts the first volume of VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, though it diverges from the source material in significant ways. We find this a defensible creative choice: Garland is not illustrating the novel so much as translating its atmosphere into a different register.
Annihilation is a film built for focused, uninterrupted viewing. Its theatrical release was limited in some markets, with streaming distribution following shortly after, which meant many viewers encountered it at home rather than on a large screen.
The film contains scenes of body horror and psychological distress that make it unsuitable for younger audiences or those sensitive to visceral imagery.
Directed by Alex Garland and starring Natalie Portman, this adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's novel arrived as one of the more genuinely strange films to come out of mainstream production in years.
Garland shoots the interior of the Shimmer, a quarantined coastal zone warped by an unknown phenomenon, as something between a fever dream and a nature documentary gone wrong. The horror, when it arrives, is biological and deeply wrong in ways that linger.
A biologist joins a classified expedition into a mysterious, ever-expanding zone where the laws of nature no longer apply. Previous teams have not returned, or have returned changed. She carries her own reasons for volunteering, reasons the film parcels out carefully.
The film adapts the first volume of VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, though it diverges from the source material in significant ways. We find this a defensible creative choice: Garland is not illustrating the novel so much as translating its atmosphere into a different register.
Annihilation is a film built for focused, uninterrupted viewing. Its theatrical release was limited in some markets, with streaming distribution following shortly after, which meant many viewers encountered it at home rather than on a large screen.
The film contains scenes of body horror and psychological distress that make it unsuitable for younger audiences or those sensitive to visceral imagery.
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