Annihilation (2018)
Have y’all ever heard of MoviePass? I’m a subscriber, and it’s the best thing on earth: pay a subscription, you can see 1 movie a day in theaters. Lately, I’ve felt like I’ve neglected my MoviePass-- like I’m cheating on it with things like “work” and “sleep”. Today, my guilt reached a boiling point, and I decided to go see a movie. That movie was Annihilation.
A quick aside: after the credits rolled, I was so excited to come home and write about this thing that I hardly had any time to process it. It’s been a couple of hours now, and I don’t think it’s getting any better, but I was just so compelled to review it, that I gave logic a giant middle finger and did what I wanted to do anyway.
My hedonism knows no boundaries.
Where to start--? First, what a title: “Annihilation.” The name alone piqued my curiosity. As a little dude, I was always fascinated by concepts like oblivion, extinction, and annihilation. At nap time, instead of sleeping, I’d lay on my mat and try to imagine what it’d be like to not exist. And I don’t mean that in the “I’m-going-to-listen-to-Elliott-Smith-til-I-can’t-feel-feelings-anymore” kind of way; I was just curious as to what the state of not being would be like. Is that the same thing? I always thought the concept was pretty interesting, that is, until I realized that it would probably feel like nothing. That’s the hard part about growing up: sometimes you get the answers, and sometimes they’re really boring.
Anyway, this next part is going to be my attempt to summarize this film. I am, despite popular belief, NOT a trained professional. Also: spoilers. Read at your own risk.
SUMMARY:
Something zips through the sky and hits a lighthouse (symbolism), and Natalie Portman is chilling in quarantine. Now there’s a bubble surrounding the area around the lighthouse, and people aren’t coming out of it. Flashbacks reveal that her husband, who is presumed dead, decided to go in, but then comes back and reveals absolutely nothing. This is still remarkable because he is the only person to actually return from the bubble. He has a seizure-thing and then he and Natalie Portman get abducted by the government. Stuff happens, she decides to join a team and go inside the bubble. Hilarity ensues. Imagine it’s set to the theme from the Benny Hill show.
Here’s the thing: remember earlier in my review when I said I hadn’t had time to process this movie, but I didn’t think it would help? Well, this will be reflected in my review. I’d apologize, but I don’t actually feel bad-- I just want you to know so that there’s some kind of understanding about what follows.
PROS:
+ Visually, this shit has got it going on (in places).
I’m sure I’ve said this before, and it’s such an umbrella compliment that can mean so many things, but in this case, I’m referring to design. There are visual elements in the film that pulled me out of my comfort zone and disoriented the shit out of me, which was cool because I tend to reside HARD in my comfort zone. Oddly enough, though, the cool stuff was spread so far that when it happened, it forced me to take notice. Otherwise, it’s kind of a boring walk through some woods and a swamp.
+ The ending (sort of).
I don’t want to spoil it, but the ending had me asking myself questions like “did I just watch a cerebral thriller?” and “is this movie smarter than I am?” Despite being the proud owner of a double-digit IQ, I’m not usually one to walk away from a movie asking questions like this. The movie takes the little bits and pieces of gripping cinema and turns that shit up to 11 at the end, creating a sense of dread and helplessness that made sympathize with the main character. I feel like I was bamboozled-- that I went to see an updated version of Contact but got something closer to Alien, which is a good thing. I like surprises.
CONS:
+ The rest of the movie?
I’m going to take a moment to gripe about something that has permeated nearly every movie of the last 30 years and needs to stop: the idea that sex is necessary to tell a story. There’s a romantic subplot here (because OF COURSE THERE IS), and it honestly didn’t make a lot of sense. This may be due, in part, to me being a eunuch (or a sociopath? depends on the day), but the confusion persists regardless. In a series of scenes meant to show viewers that Natalie Portman and her husband are in love, they have sex. While the dialogue between them does forthrightly shine light on a tired old trope, it ends in sex. Why? It absolutely doesn’t need to. I don’t think anyone in the audience was holding their breath until he inserted his penis into his wife-- one could safely assume. It lends nothing to the actual story. If that had been the only scene, I probably wouldn’t have noticed (or cared), but sex comes up a few other times in the movie, and I can’t help but think that the storyteller was certain that it was important to the plot. It wasn’t. In fact, it convoluted the whole thing. People do not need to have sex in EVERY film. It’s a tired, lazy trope to show characters having feelings for one another (or base urges). I wish it would stop, but the world could not care less about what I want, let alone Hollywood.
Eh, maybe.
Anyway, the rest of the movie was kind of lackluster. What I mean by this is that it did nothing interesting: it was a linear story told in a fairly predictable manner. It took no real risks. It’s not the end of the world, but for as wild as some of the praise-worthy scenes were, I expected a little more.
+ The ending (sort of).
It’s not a typo so much as a nod to the ending of the film (so much for subtlety): the ending also sucked. The ending could pretty neatly be divided into two parts, the first of which had my toes all curled up and a death grip on my armrests. Once I unclenched the muscles in my hands and feet, however, the ending just stopped doing it what it was supposed to: ending the story. There’s this lazy conclusion that fizzled out (zing), and just didn’t feel very deserved. Also, the movie takes concepts that it was so careful to draw attention to earlier and just ignores them. Finally, it looks like it’s setting up for a sequel, but the only story they could tell would end up being a wildly different movie, and I’m still not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.
Going back to the questions I asked earlier, I’d like to toss “am I too stupid to get this movie?” into the mix. Some parts felt like art for art’s sake, which is fine if you don’t really care about meaning. Others felt so purposeful, like there was a greater meaning you’re meant to glean from this film that I just couldn’t do on my own. I’m genuinely torn. I can’t tell if I liked this movie or not. It rides the thin line between genuine, thoughtful, artistic film, and Trudging Through a Swamp of Dogshit: The Movie. It’s a lot like Blade Runner 2049 in that regard, I’d say: if no one else understands your art, does it matter? Some people say that art can be cathartic, and might argue that artists do it for themselves (rather than an audience), but that sounds like the age-old tree-falling-in-the-woods question, to which the answer is “of course it does.” Hell, then again, I’m the only person reading these, so maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, I genuinely don’t know how to rate this movie, so I’m going to give it a resounding & for “I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to rate this.”
Turn Off Your Fucking Phone: An Ode to Some Doofus
You know who you are.
During the absolute apex of the movie’s conflict, one of its final scenes, some troglodyte’s phone went off one aisle down and three seats to the left of me. In a magnificent display of willpower, I chose not to descend directly into madness (where you don’t pass go OR collect $200), tear his stupid arms off, and beat him to death with them. Look, way back, when cell phones were new, it was still pretty unforgivable to accidentally leave your ringer on. They have countless signs and even commercials before the movie warning you to at least put that shit on vibrate. These days? You’ve had years and years to practice being a decent human. To fail this spectacularly is nothing short of a miracle-- wait, what’s the opposite of a miracle? That. Given the rest of my life, and then maybe another hundred years, I couldn’t screw up this hard. You are a moron, and in the slim chance you are reading this, I want you to know that I have immortalized your idiocy on the internet. Fuck you!












