3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, gore, profanity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.23.18
Some say the world will end in
fire; some say in ice.
Author/editor/literary critic
Jeff VanderMeer apparently prefers cellular madness.
 |
| After narrowly surviving an encounter with an unexpectedly oversized alligator, cellular biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) is disturbed to find that its mouth contains far too many rows of teeth. |
His Nebula Award-winning 2014
novel, Annihilation, is — to say the least — a challenging but thoroughly
fascinating read.
Director/scripter Alex Garland’s
big-screen adaptation is thoughtful, absorbing, unsettling and even scary. For
a time.
Unfortunately, he lets everything
go to hell in the third act. And I don’t mean that in a positive way.
Certain science fiction films
suffer from this problem: a terrific premise and suspenseful development, with
— ultimately — nowhere to go. Garland’s take on Annihilation reminds me
strongly of 1974’s Phase IV, a low-budget little flick that began with a
similarly captivating premise but concluded with a nonsensically metaphysical
climax (literally) that only could have been concocted by somebody on
mind-altering substances.
The major problem here is that
Garland was hell-bent on delivering a resolution that’s wholly at odds with
VanderMeer’s novel ... which is only the first book in a trilogy. Garland’s
“solution” to this dilemma isn’t merely unsatisfying; it makes total hash of
what takes place during the first two acts.
Garland is best known as the
writer/director behind 2014’s brilliant Ex Machina, a deliciously unsettling
sci-fi saga that holds together superbly, up to a disturbing final scene that
perfectly enhances everything that has come before. Too bad he couldn’t bring
that rigorous logic and plot coherence to this one.
Former soldier-turned-cellular biologist
Lena (Natalie Portman) has mourned the loss of her husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac),
for a full year. Flashbacks and passing remarks reveal that he’s active
military, subject to abrupt special-ops missions that he’s not able to share
with his wife. Now long missing after having deployed on ... something ... Lena
reluctantly believes him dead.
Until he turns up in their
bedroom one day, disoriented and with no apparent memory of how he got there,
or where he has been, or who he was with, or ... anything.
It gets worse. Following a
chaotic blur of activity, Lena wakens in a heavily guarded military compound led
by a tight-lipped psychologist named Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh). She
reveals that Kane was a member of the most recent mission sent into the
“shimmer,” a sinister and mysterious environmental disaster zone that is
inexorably expanding along a thus-far deserted section of the Atlantic
coastline.
(We know it was caused by a
meteor that crashed to Earth, striking a lighthouse at what now has been tagged
as the point of contact; we witness this as the movie begins.)
The shimmer — dubbed “Area X” —
has been studied for three years now. Nothing can stop its expansion. Nobody
knows what is happening within. Everybody who has gone “inside” has failed to
return. Except Kane.
The previous incursion parties were
male and exclusively military. Ventress decides to take a different approach,
by leading a female team of scientist-soldiers: anthropologist Cass Sheppard
(Tuva Novotny), physicist Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson) and paramedic Anya
Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez). Lena, desperate to know what happened to her
husband, insists on coming along. Ventress doesn’t argue.
So far, so good ... if a bit of
an eyebrow-lifter. (No sign of stronger governmental oversight? Seriously?)
The quintet passes through the
softly iridescent “curtain” that denotes the barrier of Area X, hikes for the
day, camps for the night. When they waken the next morning — or so it seems —
the evidence of depleted supplies suggests that they’ve been inside for at
least a week. (Cue the flutter of tiny hairs on the back of our necks.)
What they discover, pushing
forward, is as troubling as it is enchanting: a radical biological crisis
foreshadowed by the brief lecture we heard Lena give earlier, in her capacity
as a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Garland builds on this with
fiendish subtlety; production designer Mark Digby and Academy Award-winning
visual effects supervisor (for Ex Machina) Andrew Whitehurst have much to do
with the chilling, creepy-crawly verisimilitude of what follows.
It looks and feels alarmingly
possible, even probable: basic biology run amok, with just enough smash-cut
surprises to satisfy viewers who like their sci-fi seasoned with Alien-style
mayhem.
And then ... and then ...
... it just gets silly. (With a
nod to H.G. Wells.)
Portman supplies more persuasive
emotional gravitas than the film deserves; her Lena is driven by a believable
blend of anguish, confusion and dogged scientific curiosity. That said, even
she can’t sell a sidebar story — revealed via additional flashbacks — that
involves a Johns Hopkins colleague (David Gyasi), and seems to have been
dragged in from an entirely different film.
Leigh badly overplays Ventress’ aloofness
and — once inside the shimmer —
angry stoicism, making her more a parody of a human being, than a
credible character. Her tight-lipped superiority quickly grow tiresome.
Rodriguez’s Anya is spunky,
flirty and ruggedly capable: a gung-ho soldier who gives these proceedings some
welcome jovial spark. It’s a solid “straight” performance from an actress
currently best known as the star of TV’s Jane the Virgin.
Thompson’s Josie is the team’s
thoughtful heart: a quiet woman not given to grand gestures, who hides a
ferocious intelligence behind jam-jar glasses. She’s the one we worry about;
she seems the most vulnerable and ill-equipped, emotionally, to deal with what
they’re confronting.
Novotny’s Sheppard, finally, is
the unofficial peacemaker: the watchful one who has the most accurate bead on
her companions.
Benedict Wong, barely recognized
within a hazmat suit, pops up periodically during a framing device that robs
the film of some suspense.
Comparisons between this film and
2016’s Arrival are inevitable; both are ambitiously mounted “first contact”
sagas anchored by strong female protagonists, who attempt to make sense of an
otherworldly incursion that defies known logic. The core narrative difference
is the distinction between intelligent design and brutal biology.
But the other core difference is
more telling. Arrival holds together despite an equally chaotic third act; it
doesn’t muddy the narrative waters by pulling an eyebrow-lifting (forgive me)
deus ex machina rabbit out of thin air.
Which, in the case of Annihilation, pretty much ruins everything.
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