- Director: Alex Garland
- Writers: Alex Garland, Jeff VanderMeer
- Stars: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 55 Minutes
- Link: https://amzn.to/3aEi4vB
Synopsis
Lena is in a quarantine room. The man asks how did she survive all those months when they only had food for two weeks. She says she doesn’t remember any of it, but everyone else was dead. We then see something fall from the sky and hit a lighthouse. Credits roll.
Lena is teaching a basic biology class to medical students. Her boss invites her to a garden party, but she has to stay home and paint the bedroom; she’s still mourning her husband Kane after a year, and the boss wants her to let it go. Suddenly, he’s there, and she’s really surprised to see him. He can’t explain where he was; he doesn’t remember. All he remembers is being outside the bedroom. He says he doesn’t feel well, and then starts spitting up blood. On the way to the hospital, soldiers force the ambulance off the road and take him, and then they sedate Lena.
We shift to “Site X.” Lena wakes up in a cell, and she meets Dr. Ventress, a psychologist. She wants to know about Kane and what he said, but Lena doesn’t know anything.
They look out the window and the landscape has changed dramatically. Ventress explains that it happened three years ago, but they can’t explain it. A lighthouse was surrounded by “a shimmer” and it’s expanded since then. It’s some kind of alien incursion. Or a natural event from space. They know very little. They’ve evacuated everyone under the pretext of a chemical spill. It keeps on growing. Kane came back from there, but he’s the only one. Now, Lena isn’t allowed to leave because she knows too much. It’s okay though, she wants to stay and be part of the project.
We flash back to Lena and Kane before his final mission. It’s all very mysterious, and he won’t tell where he’s going. She meets three friends on the project, Anya, Cass, and Josie, and they’re planning to go into the shimmer soon. The theory is that something in there either kills the people who go in or drives then mad to kill each other. People go in, they never come out – except for Kane who is comatose. Lena tells Dr. Ventress that she wants to go in as well.
So the five of them go in, armed and well-prepared. The edge of the thing looks like a big soap bubble.
Inside the shimmer, Lena wakes up in her tent. None of them remember anything after walking through the barrier. The lack of rations indicate they’ve been in there three or four days. They don’t know exactly where they are, but the lighthouse at the center is on the ocean, and they know the ocean to the East, so they head that way.
They run into a giant alligator that’s been mutated just like the flowers. Lena explains that you can’t crossbreed between different species, but it looks like that’s what has been happening.
They find a building with a video of Kane cutting open one of the other soldiers. There was something alive inside the soldier, growing and replacing his organs. They then find the actual soldier growing into the walls.
That night, something breaks through the fence. It’s a giant bear that eats Cass. They argue about going back, but eventually continue on toward the lighthouse. They find unusual animals and plants with humanoid shapes. They figure out that the shimmer refracts not only light and radio waves, but DNA as well. It’s trying to duplicate life, but it’s getting it wrong.
That night, Anya goes nuts and ties up the other three, she thinks Lena has been lying to them about Cass’s death. She says she can see her fingerprints shifting. She hears Cass outside, but it’s a huge mutated bear that calls for help… in English— in Cass’s voice. It kills Anya before Josie shoots it. Morning comes, Ventress goes on alone, and Josie sprouts buds and becomes a plant.
Lena continues on toward the lighthouse, and she finds crystals and huge glass trees growing on the beach. When she gets to the lighthouse, she finds bodies and another video camera. She watches the video, which shows Kane questioning his own existence. Then he kills himself with a grenade. And his duplicate walks into the frame.
Lena sees the big hole in the floor and of course, she has to go in. She finds Ventress in there. Ventress explains that “it” will grow until it encompasses everything, resulting in Annihilation. She then spits up a psychedelic light show and becomes a big cloudy eye-like thing. Lena looks into it and it becomes her. She runs out of the hole, but finds the new thing waiting for her on the other side. They have a long stare-down, and then they fight.
As it continues to look more and more like her, Lena hands it a grenade and runs away. As she runs outside, she can see that the grenade didn’t kill it. It does, however, set the lighthouse on fire. It crawls back into its hole, setting everything down there on fire as well. The crystal trees ask begins to burn, as does everything connected to the creature.
Back in the interrogation room, Lena explains that it wasn’t destroying everything, it was making something new, but she doesn’t know what. She goes to see Kane, knowing that he’s not the original. They hug, and both of their eyes shimmer…
Commentary
The goal of the mission was to investigate the lighthouse where everything began. Why couldn’t they have just taken a boat in and had a five minute walk to the lighthouse? The film takes place three years after it started. There’s no visible explanation of why they couldn’t have done it.
They know that there’s going to be weirdness inside the shimmer, but at no point does anyone put on rubber gloves or breathing masks. Lena is always touching the gross plants with her bare hands. Gloves probably wouldn’t have helped, but they made no effort at all to prevent contamination. Not even hazmat suits.
It’s more sci-fi than horror, but with mutant alligators, human mutations, aliens, and body horror it definitely has its feet in the horror genre. It’s pretty slow moving, but it’s good.