Annihilation

Rating

B- (3/5)

Three words

Existential, Weird, Mind-Blowing

Brief Review

Annihilation follows Natalie Portman who plays a biologist and former soldier that leads an expedition into “Area X”, an unknown phenomena where nature becomes distorted. This movie is not what I thought it was going to be when I walked into the theater. The trailer made the movie seem as if it was an action sci-fi movie. While it is definitely a sci-fi, it is not so much of an action movie. What really threw me for a loop is how existential and confusing the movie becomes. Most of the movie is very intriguing as you are trying to figure out what is happening in Area X. However, the last piece of the movie takes a very large turn and asks complex existential questions that the rest of the movie did not necessarily prepare you for. On top of this, the movie never necessarily answers the questions, instead leaving them purposefully ambiguous. The best way to describe this movie is to imagining combining Arrival with Inception/Interstellar and that’s more or less what you get with Annihilation. Unfortunately this movie was not as well done as those three, but it is definitely an interesting movie.