Another day of watching a horror movie every night of October. This time, I watched Annihilation, a 2018 sci-fi horror film featuring the ever-talented and beautiful Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaacs.
Annihilation’s plot is wonderfully simple: the government has discovered a bizarre “shimmering” barrier appear on earth that they have called “The Shimmer.” Everything they have sent into the Shimmer has not come out (I had terrible 2015 Fantastic Four flashbacks with this plot point but it turned out fine). The exception is Oscar Isaacs’s character who has returned from a mission to the Shimmer albeit in rough physical and mental shape. His wife, Portman’s character, is a genius biologist and veteran (girl power!) who embarks on a follow-up mission into the Shimmer to discover what happened to her husband and his comrades.
Annihilation does a delightful job of building tension and creating a sense of existential dread as the movie goes on. Its tone is very Lovecraftian, focusing on cosmic elements of the unknown and human elements of the psyche’s fragility and limitations of understanding. It also has some of the most beautiful–if not strange–visuals I have ever seen in a horror movie, helping immerse viewers in the wonder and mystery of its setting. The cast is stellar, and while its storytelling leaves much to be discussed and debated by the end of the movie, I left it feeling stimulated in a way that enhanced my discomfort and fear and that other movies, such as Us, failed to accomplish. Prepare for a good hour of reflection after you watch this one. I hope we get many more films like it.
