Annihilation makes its unfamiliar environment unsettling before it becomes understandable. The visual imagination and the restrained performances are strong enough to carry a few overexplained stretches of dialogue.
Spoiler-free review.
Annihilation is most effective when it leaves an image difficult to classify. Something can be beautiful and still feel deeply wrong. Alex Garland gives that uncertainty time to register. The environment feels worth paying attention to on its own terms, rather than only as a collection of obstacles waiting for the characters.
Natalie Portman holds the film together. Her performance works well with a story where being able to describe something doesn't always mean understanding it. The people around her bring different kinds of caution and resolve. Their conversations are best when no one has a clear idea of what they're dealing with.
The sound and the visual design do a lot of the dramatic work. They make changes in the surroundings feel significant before the dialogue supplies a category for them. I liked that the film is prepared to be unsettling without immediately offering relief. Its science fiction has room for confusion as an experience.
Some of the dialogue explaining things feels less interesting than what the film has already shown. The characters aren't all developed equally. But those issues don't take away from the atmosphere or the imaginative ideas. The film makes its concepts feel real and hard to forget. I'd avoid knowing too much about what happens later.
2018 · English. Film details · Poster source · Artwork © its respective rights holders.
Annihilation makes its unfamiliar environment unsettling before it becomes understandable. The visual imagination and the restrained performances are strong enough to carry a few overexplained stretches of dialogue.
— Desly