Annihilation (2018, Alex Garland)

I had to think long and hard about how I felt about the movie adaptation of Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation which I loved. I was a big fan of Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” too but thought the psychedelic and literary novel was going to be pretty much impossible to film without major reworking.

Visually the movie is absolutely stunning and ultimately I feel that Garland’s decision to drop some of the more out-there stuff in the book (including some major plot elements) was probably wise.

On first viewing (in the theatre) I couldn’t get my head around the lighthouse scene. This felt nothing like the book and looked so oddly out of keeping with the organic mutations earlier on in the film. But on second viewing I’ve decided that everything in the lighthouse is metaphorical because it is beyond our comprehension – much like the acid trip Jupiter and Beyond scene in 2001. With that in mind, I decided the film was great.