Release Date 23Feb2018
ANNIHILATION or The colour out of the crack of someone's ass.
Annihilation is yet another in a series of films of late that are heavy on visual gusto and broad abstractions that are meant to give weight to the existential questions it clearly wants to ask, but doesn't actually have the brains or the balls to reconcile in any meaningful way.
Loosely Based on the first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy (Pass on this movie for the books) ANNIHILATION is an exercise in the tedium that is created when someone with their head clearly up their ass tries to change a perfectly fine story to make philosophical statement they haven't the wit for.
It starts with promise, The film’s protagonist: a Johns Hopkins biologist and former soldier named Lena (Natalie Portman) is being debriefed about her time spent in “the shimmer,” a mysterious iridescent presence that’s slowly swallowing up coastal land. Many have entered the shimmer. Only two have returned: Lena, the only survivor of an all-female expedition (characters played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, and Tuva Novotny), and Lena’s soldier husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) who went in previously. He was thought dead for a year, only to suddenly return home and fall into a coma.
That is where the good stuff ends and an hour and a half of pretentious assery dates getting wrapped in conventional survival horror bacon begins.
April 11th is the season 3 premiere of THE EXPANSE and a better use of your time.