A "review" of Annihilation (2018)

The tower.

The tower, which was not supposed to be there.

The tower, whose bizarre existence sparks the central mystery of the novel from the very first sentence of the book. The tower, which is the source of the biologist's brightness. The tower, which is a confounding palimpsest of living words, a florid and unnerving sermon composed of riddles and metaphors weaving the trilogy into a code that would even make that rapping kid in Magnolia jealous.

The tower is not present in the movie Annihilation. And that's OK.

The younger me, the me from a few years ago, would rage at this. The me of today understands and accepts this. The movie is not the book, and its story is unique.

If you watch the movie and read the book in either order, you will experience two different stories. Neither the film nor the novel ever fully eclipse the other. In the same way that Stanley Kubrick's The Shining lives wholly removed from Stephen King's original story, Alex Garland's Annihilation is no mere film adaptation. It stands as its own entity, similar in shape to — yet distinctly different from — the original. How fitting.

We now have two separate versions of the same basic story. All the same building blocks are there. As any good architect does, Garland rearranges them into a new shape to suit his needs.

The expedition still exists, as does the nature preserve. The events therein diverge from the novel, which means the movie and the book won't spoil each other for new audiences, which is a little bit of a miracle. The specifics don't really matter here, for the same reason that 2001: A Space Odyssey is about people flying to Jupiter but it isn't really about people flying to Jupiter.

Natalie Portman's biologist is not the iconoclastic science nerd that fans of the novel would recognize, but she is still compelling. Where VanderMeer's biologist is an independent, driven weirdo whose uncompromising motivation is to seek and discover, Portman is more sympathetic and more approachable. The biologist is a beautifully flawed character in the book, one who never wastes an instant asking the reader for mercy or for understanding. In the movie, her motivations are far simpler.

While her motives may be simple, Annihilation is not a simple movie. It's the rarest kind of film there is these days, a smart science fiction story that does not pander to its audience. It dabbles with exposition, but does not leave you with a clean, concise explanation. It dares to leave things vague and open to interpretation, a cardinal sin today in an industry that insists every movie must be franchise-friendly, homogenous, and instantly recognizable to audiences as a sequel, prequel, or reboot.

What Annihilation is, beyond its basic plot structure, is sensually beautiful and engaging and enigmatic and weird and wonderful. It is not going to be a fun ride for anyone who just wants to turn their brain off and passively have something hit their retinas for 2 hours. It holds your attention, it warps and wefts, it poses some philosophical challenges, and it has no Control. 10/10