Annihilation Review

A movie like "Annihilation" is a tough sell- you have killer mutated creatures, trees that grow in the shape of people, affairs, all inside a giant CGI wall called the "shimmer." How do you advertise a picture like this? Cast Natalie Portman as the lead, of course! She plays Lena, a biologist and former soldier whose husband went on a secret mission inside the shimmer, came back, and suddenly is throwing up blood and having seizures. So in the world of movie plots, Lena joins the next mission inside the mysterious veil.

She's lead by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who's callous disinterest is a wonderful contrast to Portman's natural softness. Three others join, but any sci-fi monster(ish) movie lover will know that they're just appetizers to the large fanged things lurking in the dark of the environment. The trilogy of tertiary characters are well acted, but the twists they bring to the story are most welcome and help deepen the strange, if not sometimes nebulous, mythology of the film.

To detail anything more is a disservice to the final product, so that's the plot in a nutshell; just know that what follows is a lusting adventure through a lush jungle peppered with the occasional monster movie moment. The world inside the shimmer is in an ever constant change, becoming stranger as the cast wanders further towards their end goal. It is an odd odyssey that exploits your expectations of the typical jungle creature feature, and any problems are minute to what I saw on screen. I'm a pushover for this genre; the same sort of deal happened last year with "Alien Covenant," and although "Annihilation" is a bit fresher, it is an equal film, just with more different a flavor.

Just know that this is not an action film! Sure, the trailers show up the film's handful of monster attacks, but it works betters the less words are spoken, the fewer bullets drop from their guns. It moves at a lethargic pace, taking its time to marvel inside the bizarre biodome. Anytime the characters look in awe, so does the audience- one particular highlight is when the motley crew stumbles upon what happened to one of the previous explorers. His skeleton is plastered across a wall, growing into the plaster and intertwined with the omnipresent motility, a haunting image that echos the space jockey from the first "Alien." Scenes like this are what I wanted more of, but the few we get easily trump last year's clunker "Life." This isn't a space opera but more of an Earth opera, if there is such a thing.