Annihilation

[X-SOLDIER]

This looks SO GOOD, and I trust the director implicitly for having awesome films, so there's that, too.





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[Tetsujin]

Consider my interest piqued.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Update: This film was definitely as haunting and incredible as I had hoped it would be. The sound design is stunning and unnerving, and the film uses it perfectly as it manages to continually find different ways of conveying it's sense of unease, unknown, and mystery.

Spoiler

Unknown sense of loss, the confusion of the unexplained, the fear of the displaced and unknown, jump scare and discovery of the first things being off, unnerving possibility of insanity or supernatural, haunting changes of the environment, fear of the unseen, fear of death, fear of insanity, gore and violence, fear of giving up, fear of deception, and just… it's just…. It does fucking EVERYTHING just to the point that you feel wholly encapsulated with how horrifying it is and then it shifts to a different tactic to leave you constantly off balance.

My best advice is just know as little as possible and just go experience it.




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[X-SOLDIER]

Gods, I literally cannot remember the last time I was left this genuinely haunted and curious at the end of a film. Ex Machina was somewhat similar, but it doesn't shift its pacing the same way to leave you so disoriented the way this does because it leaves you with much more specific questions. I just bought the soundtrack and I've had chills up my spine literally the entire time it's been playing.

Fuck me. The weirdest thing is that the presentation of the film worked so well that

Spoiler

I literally forgot things and then remembered them later such that I felt I was as disoriented as she is while being interviewed about what happened. There're only five primary characters and I literally COMPLETELY forgot what happened to one of them until about 20 mins later.

I just can't even wrap my head around how well it managed to use the sound, visuals, and cinematography in a way that got into my head so well like that. I definitely wasn't expecting that at all.





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[Tetsujin]

I forgot about this.

Looks like this is a Netflix release outside the US.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

I forgot about this.

Looks like this is a Netflix release outside the US.

Woah! Looks like it happened for all the right reasons, too.

The movie didn’t test well, and it appears that David Ellison, executive producer, was concerned that the film would be too complicated. He wanted changes made, which apparently included tweaking the ending and making alterations to Portman’s character, but Garland refused. He was backed by Scott Rudin, producer, who also produced Ex-Machina. Since Rudin has final cut, he and Garland won the battle.

Thank fuck that they weren't allowed to touch this. It'll be interesting to see how it does on Netflix as a release, though given the early reviews, I think that they'll be pretty disappointed that they didn't give it a proper theater release.


At least the rest of you fine folks'll be able to see it soon. My only recommendation would be to watch this with headphones if you don't have a really good sound system, because dear fucking gods, that sound design deserves to be delivered in an immersive experience.




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[Interslicery]

Still going to see it in theatres. If for nothing else, to support the director and his choice to not compromise his movie.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

I'm super looking forward to your comments on it as soon as you do, Inter – especially after all your opinions on The Shape of Water (and Mage needs to see both of them ASAFP). I think that I'll have a shitton more to say as soon as I know I can have a back-and-forth about it.

EDIT:

Spoiler

Comment I want to bring up later

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[Interslicery]

Ok... so... 100% agree with everything X said about the sound design. Jesus christ, that fucking

Spoiler

bear.

God. Fucking. Jesus.

So... I really loved it. I have opinions, but they're still forming. Clearly,

Spoiler

there's something to be said about duality, self destruction, and how change can be both horrific, and beautiful. Or beautifully horrific.
Like... at the end, when she has the interaction with her doppelganger, it mimics, but not a one-to-one mimicry. Like it's learning how to become her. When she tries to escape, it presses her against the door, and crushes her. Suffocating her, but doesn't kill. "People rarely commit suicide, we just self-destruct".

We naturally try to sabotage parts of our life. It's painful, horrific, and ultimately changes us. In horrific, or beautiful ways, depending on the person. But we are a different person. To the point we may loose sight of our own identity (swirling fingerprints).

I'd like to watch it again, but it's not getting released on netflix canada. I can see why they wanted to change the movie from a business standpoint, it's not mainstream friendly after a certain point.

P.S. Jesus christ... that fucking

Spoiler

bear. When there's that straight on shot and it screams that low key, almost human scream.

The most on edge, and heart pounding I've felt in awhile.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Yeah, dude. Things like that are one of the big reasons why going into the film blind is the best. I loved having no sense of anything that was upcoming.

Spoiler

That section is just absolutely harrowing in literally every way. It starts already tense with the squirming moment of them all being tied up and as soon as you hear Sheppard, and you KNOW it can't be her, just ratchets everything up, but it absolutely does not prepare you for the fucking bear AT ALL. As soon as I got to read more about the design of that & everything else (in the link from my above poast) it just lended itself even more to the steps that they took to make that totally goddamn unnerving.

Also, insofar as being disorienting

Spoiler

I literally forgot what happened to Dr. Ventress for about 20 mins. All I could remember was Lena saying that she didn't know what happened to them, and her leaving to go to the Lighthouse on her own.

If there's ever been a film that I want to watch director's commentary and see like a billion breakdowns on, it's this film. The comment I linked in the previous post mentions a bunch of little cinematography things that I want to re-watch the film and look for. It makes me wish I could get my hands on it earlier somehow, and I know that I'm gonna be jealous of everyone who'll be able to just watch and rewatch this on Netflix over and over at their whim.

Also, the soundtrack still permanently embeds chills in my spine (although one of the tracks is currently broken on Google Play Music at the moment).





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[X-SOLDIER]

Spoiler: Some Solid Interviews

Also, someone mentioned that there're some interesting similarities between it H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space"




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[Interslicery]

Excellent point they make at the beginning of the discussion.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Yeah, I pretty much felt that 100%. I also agreed with the point that this is the sort of film that it seems like everyone BUT America should've seen in theaters, and America got a limited theatrical release. So dang weird, man.

Regardless, I'm glad the Yurpeenz can all finally see this soon.




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[X-SOLDIER]

I've heard that this has some similarities to another film I need to check out, which is the 1979

Spoiler: Stalker

Also, all you fine folk should be able to Netflix this.





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[HylianMogget]

I really want to see this, but I don't think I'll be able to make it to the theater before it stops showing. But maybe that's for the best since I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to scary stuff . If I don't manage to see it in theaters, I'll definitely watch it when it's up on Netflix.

I read the book a little while ago and thought it was absolutely fantastic. I would imagine there are aspects of the book that were tricky to adapt (a first person narrator always seems like a challenge for adaptations), and I've heard that it's sort of a loose adaptation but still works really well, so I'm interested in seeing it what they've done with it. The author said it's even more surreal than the book, so that, along with the comparisons to Stalker and 2001, makes me really interested to see it, too.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

I really want to see this, but I don't think I'll be able to make it to the theater before it stops showing. But maybe that's for the best since I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to scary stuff . If I don't manage to see it in theaters, I'll definitely watch it when it's up on Netflix.

I read the book a little while ago and thought it was absolutely fantastic. I would imagine there are aspects of the book that were tricky to adapt (a first person narrator always seems like a challenge for adaptations), and I've heard that it's sort of a loose adaptation but still works really well, so I'm interested in seeing it what they've done with it. The author said it's even more surreal than the book, so that, along with the comparisons to Stalker and 2001, makes me really interested to see it, too.

Given that it's out on Netflix internationally now, I'm sure there's a way for you to see if, even if you can't catch it before it wanders out of theaters (though if you do, I still stand that you should definitely use headphones when watching it, unless your sound system is amazing).

Additionally, I'm not sure I'd call the film scary. It's definitely varying degrees of haunting, unnerving, anxious, & tense, and it's equally bewildering, intriguing, surreal, and mind-bending. Aside from many a scene or possibly two, I wouldn't say that scary covers the sort of perspective. Best I can describe is that it's VERY much like experiencing a dream, and not at all like a nightmare. Even though there are some elements that could be scary, you don't really stay scared of them, even if they stick in your mind.

Gods, I REALLY need to go watch this again.




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[HylianMogget]

Additionally, I'm not sure I'd call the film scary. It's definitely varying degrees of haunting, unnerving, anxious, & tense, and it's equally bewildering, intriguing, surreal, and mind-bending. Aside from many a scene or possibly two, I wouldn't say that scary covers the sort of perspective. Best I can describe is that it's VERY much like experiencing a dream, and not at all like a nightmare. Even though there are some elements that could be scary, you don't really stay scared of them, even if they stick in your mind.

Oh, cool, that all sounds good. I like atmospheric stuff, I think it's mostly jump scares that I'm not really a fan of (though I get that they're kind of unpleasant by nature); they're not a deal-breaker for me, just not one of my favorite aspects of horror films.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

You & me both. I don't recall that this film has any. A couple startling moments, but nothing really as a jump scare as I can recall. For the most part I think that jump scares also come off as the film maker using a cinematography technique to scare you, which definitely isn't the case for anything that catches you off guard in this.





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[Tetsujin]

Just watched this. This is the kind of movie where I like going in blind.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

It really was the best knowing as little as possible. I'm really curious how the novel-reading folk've felt about it.





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[Shademp]

This movie was a visual and auditory treat. A surreal sci-fi movie that keeps you continuously observing and speculating. Almost without exception, this type of movie leaves me disappointed and frustrated by the end. Not so with "Annihilation".

Spoiler: Ending spoilers & Philosophical themes

When Lena's and Kane's hands were touching at the beginning of the movie and their hands were refracted in the glass of water, it was obvious the director wanted us to take notice. Knowing at the end that Kane is in fact a copy created from the "refracting" alien organism, one sees the foreshadowing/hint that was meant with the glass of water in the beginning of the movie.

This idea of refractions also seems to be the point of the movie's final shot when we see the alien + mutated human inside a glass cage. I won't try to dig into any deeper meanings here, but you can tell the intentionality of the shot.


One of the reasons that the movie leaves me satisfied is because it motivates me to remember scenes and realize their narrative purposes. There are themes of dualities here: Creation vs Destruction, New vs Old, Acceptance vs Denial, Eternity vs Impermanence/Transience. I would even say that the theme of the enlightenment of the ego (or lack thereof), in a strongly Buddhist sense, is present in the movie.



Kane and Lena lived in a destroyed marriage. It had already been decaying because of Kane's absence but the killing blow was Lena's infidelity. I have heard it said that when this happens in marriages where you choose to stick together, you never restore what you once had. You have to create a new relationship. New trust and intimacy, flavored with the burden of past history.

I believe that Kane's alien clone and Lena's mutated nature is a parallel to this transformation that married couples go through when one or both have betrayed trust. Sometimes a transformation that can be so dramatic that you might as well say that the old person/relationship was killed and that a new person/relationship was created. The old suffered ANNIHILATION (BOOM! Title drop!). Just as Cass Sheppard commented: Her old person was killed when her own daughter died. See? Every scene matters. Well, almost every scene.


So what was the point with Lena getting a "bruise" that is seemingly what changes into a tattoo that looks like an infinity (∞) sign?

I believe that the infinity tattoo brought on by mutation represents continuity even in the face of change. Lena may be mutated and no longer be the same person she was before, and her relationship with Kane is certainly no longer what it once was, but there is still a continuity: An abstract, intangible soul that carried a set of kinetic motions from the beginning all the way to the present.

This theme is even more linked to Lena due to her dialogue about how she would be immortal if only her cells would divide indefinitely.

You take a cell, circumvent the Hayflick limit, you can prevent senescence. It means the cell doesn't grow old, it becomes immortal. Keeps dividing, doesn't die. They say aging is a natural process, but it's actually a fault in our genes.

Here is where the movie is incomplete and imperfect in its description of biological immortality. But let us assume that what Lena is talking about is immortality through constant, perfect regeneration. No shortening of the telomeres which leads to imperfect copies of genetic data, thus contributing to the biological breakdown of the entity. I speculate then that the reason for Lena gaining an infinity tattoo means that she achieved immortality. Either she literally became immortal, in that the Shimmer mutated her genes so that she now has indefinitely perfect cell division, which might also explain why Lena is able to keep her lucidity throughout the experience. Or she found philosophical immortality by accepting the constant death and regeneration of all things.

Whenever anybody brings up the "immortal" jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii, a philosophical contradiction screams back at us. Surely, one could say that when each cell in a biological body has been replaced, the old body is dead and a new one is created. Having perfect cell division doesn't mean that cells can't break down or that its components are forever. The ship of Theseus is screaming at us, alongside the immortal jellyfish and the theoretical immortal Natalie Portman.

Yet personal reports from a human being, even after all their cells have been replaced, is that at no point have they died. The change has been too gradual. There is still a sense of continuity, the personal claim of a soul.

In this way, immortality is married to impermanence. Life and death, creation and destruction, are intertwined. This is why we find the Shimmer to be reported in contradictions: It creates new lifeforms but it also causes the minds of our main characters to break apart. In the lighthouse, Dr. Ventress (which I believe to be the combination the original Dr. Ventress and her alien copy) claims that the alien will destroy and divide all. To her, the alien is only decay, not creation. Yet decay, to fertilize the earth, is an essential part of the underworld that feeds the growing flowers. This may also be why the Dr. Ventress human+alien hybrid is presented briefly without eyes: She is blind to the truth of how creation and destruction are intertwined. Dr. Ventress was naive in hoping that the person who reached the lighthouse would be the same one who entered the Shimmer: She erroneously believes in a constant, solid, unchanging state of being. Of course then she is the one who believes the alien to be ALL destruction and disintegration.


I do not think it's a coincidence that the final goal of the journey is the lighthouse: A source if illumination, or shall we say, enlightenment. The Shimmer is merely the prelude, or the hint, to the possibility of enlightenment. In his final moments, the real Kane sits down in a meditative position, close enough to the lotus position associated with east-asian religious practices and the enlightenment of the Buddha.

Kane experiences ego death as he encounters his alien copy. With the dissolution of his self, he lights himself on fire using a flash grenade. Not only is enlightenment of consciousness associated with, and sometimes visually represented with, intense flashes of light but this act of suicide also reminds us of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức's self-immolation (and those monks who followed his example).


There are even more ways one can observe how the themes are woven together. The alien copies can on more levels be viewed as representing theories of consciousness, both scientific and philosophical. Then there are the themes of life and death...

Cass Sheppard reports that she died when her own daughter died. She is the living dead. I do not think it is a coincidence that she was the first to be killed off and then manifest as a literal LIVING DEAD via the mutated bear! She is the ghost that defies physical death.

Josie tried to feel alive through self-harm and initially she was the most shocked in the team by all the death and gore around her. Ultimately though, she accepts death and literally becomes one with nature by turning into plants. There may be some theme as to how she conquered her fear by being the one who killed the mutated bear, the manifestation of the living dead, but I can't see what the intention might have been here.

In short, this movie is brilliant. It's a beautiful tapestry that weaves together visual effects, sound design, smart storytelling, philosophy of dualities, and many more aspects of the art that is movie making.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Gods Shad, I have been ACHING to hear someone rant in massive detail about this movie, and that post was absolutely everything I needed today. I really want to rewatch it especially after knowing that

Spoiler

one of the things that most everyone in the cast has said is that there're more echoes than you notice the first time you see it.

Everything about the glass scenes, the tattoos, and other things really tie in SO carefully to the main theme about self-destruction, permutation, and transmutation. I just cannot get enough of all of it.

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[Shademp]

Alt Shift X goodness!

Spoiler

I did not realize before that the tattoo was supposed to be an ouroboros. Seeing the tattoo on others also make me rethink my interpretations of the tattoo.

 

[Cthulhu]

Just watched it yesterday, good movie . There's some moments that could be described as jump scares but tbf they've managed to avoid that for the most part and went for some good old fashioned gore and body horror instead . X mentioned Colour Out Of Space earlier, and yeah, there's a lot of overlap there - iä, fhtagn, and shit:

Spoiler: Colour Out Of Space tl;dr from wikipedia

In the tale, an unnamed narrator pieces together the story of an area known by the locals as the "blasted heath" in the wild hills west of Arkham, Massachusetts. The narrator discovers that many years ago a meteorite crashed there, poisoning every living being nearby; vegetation grows large but foul tasting, animals are driven mad and deformed into grotesque shapes, and the people go insane or die one by one.

Sound familiar?

 

[X-SOLDIER]

FULL SPOILERS IN THIS VIDEO:

EDIT (or as @Interslicery said when posting this on the other thread):

Please watch the movie first, if you haven't seen it. It's a fantastic movie.

This also really gets at the heart of why I love science fiction so much for storytelling, but also why I really love the ending. Seeing the boys of the script along with it's execution was really fantastic.




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