After the excellent Ex_Machina, Alex Garland is back with Annihilation, a science fiction thriller carried by Natalie Portman. Broadcast in American and Chinese cinemas, the feature film arrives in Europe directly on the Netflix platform, producers being reluctant to release it in theaters. All this to the great displeasure of the director who carried and conceived the project from beginning to end as a product of cinema and not domestic entertainment.
An uneven work that oscillates between genius and B series
Let's get straight to the heart of the matter. Already you should know that this film is the adaptation of the eponymous novel, by Jeff VanderMeer (2014). Annihilation is very uneven and constantly oscillates between genius and futility. With remarkable writing ideas, Alex Garland manages to capture the curiosity of the audience without meeting their expectations. From the premise of departure, the intriguing story weaves its web. An uncertain land, a meteorite that crashes on our planet and creates the shimmer , an independent, dangerous and expanding microcosm. However, the introduction does not hold water: a totally sloppy setting, which introduces the characters without any form, which leaves the details on the side of the road and which places its protagonists directly in the heat of the action without any real preparation. These facilities, where the filmmaker does not take the lead, discredit his work and give it an aftertaste of series B. The flat and uninteresting dialogues do not help matters, as does the absence of secondary characters. The editing is straight, and some great ideas like memory loss are neglected. The characters are relatively bland and this survival does not really manage to worry, especially because of disgusting CGI characters. However, after flaws, which give the film its flavor of series B, Annihilation has very good ideas of writing, and symbolism.
Alex Garland knows his classics
The parallel with Stalker is inevitable. A forest that has its own rules, where the characters find themselves confronted with themselves, looking for an answer to a question they do not even know. However, Andrei Tarkovsky's film goes much further. It is a deeply organic, nagging and contemplative work, all with very little technical means. Alex Garland tries to reach this ecstasy of sensations, and succeeds, the time of a penetrating sequence, where Natalie Portman meets the heart of the shimmer. Supported by a haunting soundtrack (The Mark – Moderat). Great moment of the film, which disappears as quickly as its arrival. Alex Garland also refers to The Invasion of the Profanators or The Thing to choose, for this question of duplication, metamorphosis. But also to the imagination of Hayao Miyazaki in the way of approaching the scenery (this salt forest, sublime) and the creatures. Annihilation is full of good ideas but uses a treatment too superficial to totally seduce. From its crescendo to its conclusion where Man finally meets, Alex Garland's film abounds in confounding science fiction materializations, spoiled by an almost lazy usual treatment.
Annihilation is an ambivalent work, somewhere between genius and stupidity, between beauty and disgust. Uneven, whether in treatment or aesthetics, Annihilation is ultimately a B series driven by good ideas. Still, the wobbly context, the lazy editing, the unnecessary flashbacks and the non-existent introduction of the characters, do not allow Garland's film to fully shine. But some flights are staggering and superb, carried by an electrifying soundtrack. Still, Annihilation revises its classics in a Stalker-style approach, an idea of duplication like The Grave Slayers, an aesthetic reminiscent of Miyazaki's universe, a finale somewhere between Mission to Mars and Contact.
