Review of Annihilation (2018) by Olivierpiel — 17 Mar 2018

A mediocre effort to revisit Stalker by Tarkovsky. While the Russian master used Tchernobyl and the possibilities of supernatural phenomena to make us dream and dance around epistemology, the concept of nature and art, Hollywood only knows the ham-fisted, immature and naïve approach. In one scene, Portman stumbles on a couple of deer/antilopes with flowering antlers (DNA echoes itself to create hybrids or alter egos) in the cliched moment of "this world can be beautiful too, you see"). This is supposed to pass as art despite the fact that many 6 year old have come up with the exact concept with her unicorns. Compare this with the scene of Stalker where the three learned men and the stalker fall asleep near a brook where human artifacts lay submerged under algae; a moment of exquisite melancholy.

Only the end sequence in the lighthouse has a brilliant visual scene.