[movie/book] Annihilation - Southern Reach Trilogy

1teaminlondon said:
yea i get the characters are all flawed and connected to death in a way, along with all the emphasis on cell division and cancer and what have you. there are alot of pieces in the film - i just dont think they fit together in any meaningful way.



lena - the protagonist - struggles to accept death and has her identity defined by it. okay good points there, i'm with ya so far. is there an inability to understand or reason with death? ehhh the whole cell division/mutation thing was pretty straight forward and understandable, characters quite clearly and explicitly die, and portman seems to have some kind of intelligible interaction with "death" at the end where she reasons a way out, back to life. if the movie truly emphasized struggling with the acceptance of death and/or being defined by it, then the 3rd act should reflect that. instead she has a weird clone fight, burns the lighthouse down, makes it home unscathed, and even gets her dead husband back - the hell? at the end of the film, there needed to be something that binds garland's pieces together into some kind of coherent whole. something like lena + her husband accepted death and were somehow reborn, they embraced death and found peace, she fought death till the very end and was totally consumed+went mad. im saying theres options. for me, garland got lost on his acid trip through "the shimmer" and never found a way back for his audience.



if the central theme/message is "annihiliation comes for us all and changes us/everything forever" then what the hell happened for the other 88 minutes of the movie. why the exotic colors and super deer and talking bear. why the secret base and the military and the suicidal girl power squad. were any of those things necessary to the plot or message? it's a narrative that reaches for something that it doesnt fully grasp



everything that enters the shimmer succumbs to death and transformation except lena - why? she enters as a widow overcome by grief, transforms into a willing murderer motivated by grief, and exits as a victorious conqueror who somehow cheated death and - oh by the way - brought her dead husband back to life. HUH?

anyways i appreciate your effort, blood bowl. if you want to a read a professionally written response, try checking out Annihilation FILM CRIT HULK! HULK BLOG! - which i mostly disagreed with but still really respect the piece & author
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I think you missed some things.
 
We watched it yesterday and all I can say about the movie is that it was a trippy mindfuckery and I don't even know anything about drugs. What I liked most was the mutated deer that looked like something from Avatar and the Crosby Stills & Nash song. An echo from my teens half a century ago.

I disagree that Lena escaped unscathed. Look at the eyes of Lena and the copy of her dead husband in that final scene embrace. Something of that alien whatever it was has gained a foothold on Earth and I almost got a feeling that a seed to a sequel was planted.
 
The Magical Zoo said:
tbh i don't really get the 'the thing' comparison at all
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The whole creating duplicates and hiding inside the human host, they showed how it was inside her with all the scenes of her looking through the microscope at the dividing alien cells. It all sort of had that "the thing" vibe. The worm scene was more from Alien but without any payoff.

That's not a mark against the movie, it's just that it was poorly executed. They showed too much of the creatures/alien in the movie, instead of being scary and mysterious it just comes across as silly. They did the same thing with Stranger Things and it ruined the effect.

If you want to dive off the deep end and go all pseudo film school intellectual and expound upon the hidden meanings to every subtle gesture made in the movie, more power to you, deep man deep.
 
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1teaminlondon said:
yea i get the characters are all flawed and connected to death in a way, along with all the emphasis on cell division and cancer and what have you. there are alot of pieces in the film - i just dont think they fit together in any meaningful way.



lena - the protagonist - struggles to accept death and has her identity defined by it. okay good points there, i'm with ya so far. is there an inability to understand or reason with death? ehhh the whole cell division/mutation thing was pretty straight forward and understandable, characters quite clearly and explicitly die, and portman seems to have some kind of intelligible interaction with "death" at the end where she reasons a way out, back to life. if the movie truly emphasized struggling with the acceptance of death and/or being defined by it, then the 3rd act should reflect that. instead she has a weird clone fight, burns the lighthouse down, makes it home unscathed, and even gets her dead husband back - the hell? the 3rd act needed something that binded garland's pieces together into some kind of coherent whole. something like in accepting death lena + her husband were somehow reborn, they embraced death and found peace, she fought death till the very end and was totally consumed+went mad. i feel like theres plenty of options. for me, garland got lost on his acid trip through "the shimmer" and never found his audience a way back.



if the central theme/message is "annihiliation comes for us all and changes us/everything forever" then what the hell happened for the other 88 minutes of the movie. why the exotic colors and super deer and talking bear. why the secret base and the military and the suicidal girl power squad. were any of those things necessary to the plot or message? it's a narrative that reaches for something that it never fully grasps



everything that enters the shimmer succumbs to death and transformation except lena - why? she enters as a widow overcome by grief, transforms into a willing murderer motivated by grief, and exits as a victorious conqueror who defeated "annihilation" and brought her dead husband back to life. HUH? does that mean she became death and took its powers? i actually kinda like that and maybe that's what the final scene should've been

anyways i appreciate your effort, blood bowl. if you want to a read a professionally written response, try checking out Annihilation FILM CRIT HULK! HULK BLOG! - which i mostly disagreed with but still really respect the piece & author
Click to expand...

yeah as said above you're still missing some stuff. i'm not going to do another effort post, but for instance, lena isn't struggling to accept biological death. she is struggling to accept annihilation, the death of her identity, as she's destroyed her marriage and her husband has vanished before she could fix it. "they are one person / they are two alone" etc. she goes into the shimmer because she doesn't know who else she is, and thinks she can get it back. she finds that her husband has already died, there is no going back. she burns down what's left behind and accepts that she will have to become a new person. hence the shimmer in her eyes.

if at this point you don't feel encouraged to rewatch it, why continue overthinking it? i'd never myself nor would i encourage someone else to rewatch a movie they didn't like to 'get' it, but if you liked it despite it not adding up, just watch it again. ppl like dangerdoggie assume that people smarter than he is like boring movies because they're jerking their dingdongs making up hidden messages (how hidden can this all be when the characters talk about it???), but it's still just a matter of wanting an interesting story with pretty pictures. themes, metaphors, arcs are just what elevate good to great.
 
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