Review of Annihilation (2018) by Skateny — 25 Feb 2018

Bring a book. Or your Kindle device.

It’s been said that the only legitimate philosophical question is in the form of “Why is there something instead of nothing?” Annihilation reverses the two subjects of that question.

I don’t mean to dismiss anyone’s experience in watching the film, but I found nothing intellectually challenging about either the story. The largely meaningless interpersonal exchanges among and between the characters offered little in the way of much-needed distraction. The scientific revelations that at least three characters advance during their slow walk to a parking lot in a mall that closed decades ago are earth-shattering only if your imagination doesn’t allow for the existence of other forms of life. Even their hypotheses were dull. And you don’t need to be a biologist to figure out what’s different within the alien forest (the writers use the word “shimmer”) in comparison to everyday, carbon-based existence. I won’t give my explanation here since it may be one of a few mundane mysteries in a script that favors only those who delight in disappointment.

The narrative is both uninspired and uninspiring, and the writers provide several opportunities to stop caring about the story and the characters. Unfortunately, this apparent attempt to tamper enthusiasm about the project and the characters who work ay getting us to dislike them spills over into the ending which then steers viewers to ask themselves a very limited set of questions about what may have happened in the film. At least those who were still interested enough to care. I was not among them. I also had the dreaded “embarrassed-for-someone-else” experience more than once, both for a meandering story that seems satisfied to make halfhearted attempts at being interesting and the portrayal of a land that was too often straining to be different in ways that might move viewers to be left in awe. Never happened. CGI and special effects are bland; nothing new to see here that hasn’t already been portrayed (badly) in Sci-Fi TV series. A walk through a rain forest is more visually compelling, even if taken on the National Geographic Channel. The alien world that’s presented evokes images of a darker though ultimately lackluster Walt Disney World in a sometimes cartoonish way rather than shuttling back and forth through the multiple levels of being presented in Interstellar. It portrays a different kind of reality as a blunt object in a world that cries out in desperation for a finer, simpler touch. What’s supposed to be frightening is too often unwittingly comical; the gravity of the mission and the vulnerability of the characters lose their narrative force as a result. (If you haven’t seen it, check out The Forbidden Planet -- a film released more than sixty years ago -- for its compelling narrative and limited but, within the context of the story, realistic special effects.).

Annihilation is not worth seeing, even if you have MoviePass. Not a single “ooh” or “aah” throughout though there was some suppressed laughter along the way. Probably the worst movie I’ve seen in more than a year. I doubt that Annihilation will show up on a “One Hundred Underrated Sci-Fi Movies from Twenty Years Ago” list. There just isn’t very much to it.