Last monday, Netflix Spain released the new movie from Alex Garland, called Annihilation. The best thing I can say about the movie is that I was disappointed. I wanted to like it so much! First of all because Alex Garland is the author of The Beach and Sunshine. I really thought he had the know-how and the skills to make the most of the material from James Vandermeer's book of the same name. However, I was sorely disappointed.

^Source

The story is about Lena, the wife of a Marine who has "gone dark" for almost a year already. She is kinda used to see him disappear like that from time to time, called to unexpected crisis places, but even by their standard this has gone way too long. And then, unexpectedly, she discovers where he has not gone to Afghanistan, Irak or some place like that but a place not less alien... even MORE alien than one could think about!

This place is a coastal area of the United States, where a meteorite has fallen, bringing with it some kind of bio-geological phenomenon called "The Shimmer". It's like a huge bubble from inside of which nothing can communicate to the exterior and nothing has ever come back... Except Lena's husband. Why? How? That's why we are going to discover.

^Source

I am not going to spoil the pleasure of anyone by saying that we are confronted here with an end-of-the-world kind situation. The bubble is growing, slowly, but surely, and is slowly changing everything and everyone inside it. After all, the title pretty much says it all! However, it's probably the most peaceful and gorgeous apocalypse you will ever see on screen: the colours are sublime, there are flowers everywhere and there is a sense of serenity which dulls the senses of the team sent to investigate the matter.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of things I can't buy in that movie. First of all, there is a troubling absence of background on the military/political situation which should come attached to such a movie. I know that Garland probably wanted to kill that cliché, but it's really difficult to believe that such a phenomenon is going to receive the visit of four female scientifics when all the other teams have been wiped out!

^Source

Second, the premices of the story are not exploited to their best... If you have seen the trailer, you know most of the stuff... How the environment inside that bubble called "Shimmer" is on steroids and all the living things are starting to cross-breed between each other. Except a crocodile/shark and a bear/cow, I felt like we barely scratched the surface of the possibilities of that astounding idea...

Third, I have not read the book, but I can't believe that Garland has kept some of the most dodgy scenes from it. Difficult to believe that Lena would hide to her teammates that Kane is her husband and I don't buy for one minute the breakdown of the bad-ass Gina Rodriguez, which felt utterly contrived and staged. The relations between that group of four women are, to say the least, unrealistic. There is no chemistry.

^Source

However, I must say that the most annoying parts of the movie are for me in the middle of it, and as soon as we reach the lighthouse (and the end), things get better, more eerie, other-worldly and really open to interpretation. In the end, I really think that Alex Garland is over-hyped as a science-fiction director and should get back to write books and scripts. The reason I loved "Sunshine" so much was... i realize now... because there was a real director behind the camera: Danny Boyle.

Have you seen the movie? Have you read the book? Let's talk about it!