I like a movie that makes you think but not necessarily a movie that makes you feel as though you need to research it after you just watched the film in order to understand what just went on.
This is a sci-fi film with a massive budget and I should probably appreciate that since I am a sci-fi nerd but mostly it just kind of made me mad because well - while watching it i didn't know what the hell was going on. Don't get me wrong this film is good and I love Natalie Portman ever since I saw her in Black Swan. I just would prefer if the director would at least leave some of the pieces of the puzzle before they ran away from the table.
Lena (Portman) is a cellular-biology professor who gives exceptionally simplistic lessons in her classes at John's Hopkins University that despite their remedial nature inspires all of her students to take massive amounts of notes on both paper and in laptops. She is considered to be an expert but she has a tragic flaw because her husband has been missing from an Army mission that resulted in him not coming home (this is not explained). Her husband turns back up at her house only to be whisked away by the military again after a very short reunion. At least this time she gets whisked away as well.
The government request that her and a group of other female soldiers go and investigate what it is that has messed up all the men that have been in this situation before... and she obliges.
....
....
2 hours later we have some actual answers to the questions we have been asking since the beginning such as "why am i watching this?"
Seriously, the movie moves very very slowly.
By the time we get to the actual interesting part of the movie we have already been watching for 1.5 hours and then the message of the movie is presented in an incredibly cryptic manor. I don't want to try to decipher it because i don't want to spoil the movie to any potential watchers.
I love Sci-Fi, please don't get me wrong. But I feel as though the makers of this film really struggled to make this thing 115 minutes long. The entire film could have been done in 40 minutes and that is evident once you are watching it. There is so much useless dialogue and "side-quests" that I feel could have just been eliminated from the story altogether.
This movie made very little money (it may end up losing money in the end) but I applaud their efforts in taking the chance on making it. The simplistic cellular university class that Portman is teaching at the very beginning is meant to really touch base with us in the end of the movie but I don't feel that it does. This film in my mind is entirely too long and boring.
Sorry Sci-Fi fans, but this one didn't do it for me. I don't think I am too stupid to understand the plot, i just feel as though there wasn't enough plot for this film to take 2 hours to get to a half an hour point.
6 / 10
getting at least a point based solely on great graphics and the fact that I am a science fiction nerd.
"The entire film could have been done in 40 minutes"
You are right about that. The movie has one basic point to make, and it didn't need so long to tell it.
But of course, it's not just a movie, it's a philosophy treatise on the nature of humanity lol.
In the UK, it didn't even get a cinema release, it went straight to Netflix, cos they knew it was too arty to make money.
Spoilers follow. . .
Alex Garland has always been interested in humanity's tendency toward self-destruction. In his script for "The Beach," based on his own novel, he showed how humans could even eff up paradise. In "28 Days Later," he showed how humans must rebuild and evolve after they self-destruct.
In his directorial debut, "Ex Machina," he depicted the human urge to destroy itself by creating superior AI androids, as well as the need for the AI android to survive by destroying her maker. Life evolves through self-destruction.
"Annihilation" is Alex Garland's final word on the destructive human impulse and the evolution that follows. Just like you said, that stuff about cancer cells splitting was key to understanding the movie:-
Basically, evolution is by it's nature a cancer, as it must kill what came before to change the future. So The Shimmer is in fact no different to what we already are, and do, annihilating and rebuilding us, just as we are already constantly doing to ourselves anyway, just faster.
Like much philosophical sci-fi before it, the pace drags as soon as you realize what it going on. By the time you see the two deer, trotting along together like twin cancer cells, and Portman's character confirms her cells are changing, the movie progression becomes a bit of a slog, as we can tell where it's going.
On the other hand, the visualizing of the cancerous qualities of evolution in the freaky bear-human hybrid was effective, and the visuals generally are arresting, beautiful and striking visions of nature evolving and changing.
I don't think this movie is as concise, as effective, as frightening or as enlightening as "Ex Machina," but sophomore movies rarely are, and Alex Garland will himself now have to evolve his preoccupations if he is to survive in the game. :)
Personally, this was one of the most boring films of 2018, I did not enjoy it at all. And if you decide to reply to me saying "Oh, you're not smart enough to understand it.", or ""you are wrong.", just because my opinion does not fall in line with yours, than honestly don't even bother.
i'm not going to argue with you about that. I ended up Instagramming for most of the first 1.5 hours and i only follow like 30 people on IG.. then i just watched the value of STEEM on a grid because even that was more interesting. I agree with you, this movie is very boring except for the last 20 minutes, which are excitingly confusing AF.
I dont know about you but seeing annihilation ads for weeks at youtube made me furious. After every video ı hear the voice "Can you describe it's form". So not watching this one thanks to it's own excessive marketing.
i was not subjected to that but i applaud your ignoring of people who market too much. I utilize this same tactic on a local level where we have advertisement trucks with loud music and every time i see one, go to whoever their competitor is for whatever it is that they are selling.
Haha this is on my "Very soon to be watched" list. I figured it can be confusing seeing trailer, maybe I'll like it. I hope so. I really want to.
Nice to have come across your profile today and meet another movie buff. Do you just love movies or do you share the same love for TV series? Because I am searching for someone who share that interest here on Steemit.
Hello, @gooddream Its Fact
I did not know about this movie, but his criticism has made me want to see it and I really like science fiction movies.
For people ranting about why an all woman team was sent in without military assistance, the psychologist literally states that all the teams sent prior to theirs were male teams so they were trying out different options.
Another point people nitpicked was why all of them had guns even though only one of them had prior military experience. Again the characters mention that they've been at the facility for quite sometime. They definitely received weapons and survival training in that time.
Everything doesn't need to be spoonfed to the audience, though in the above cases they still were.
I am definitely gonna avoid this one.... And @gooddream your reviews rock 🤟
Please tell me, what's the movie about?? Before I watch it at cinema
According to Garland himself, this is a film about self-destruction. And in the book about it nothing happened, Alex put his idea on top of someone else's story. Alex expresses an extremely interesting idea, and the direct text in the film itself: all people are striving for self-destruction. Suicide, drugs, alcohol are only the most obvious manifestations of this trait, but this does not mean that all the others do not follow the same path. Someone destroys their happy marriage, someone sabotages an excellent career, but we all go to some extent to self-destruction.
A parallel with living cells, which are programmed for suicide, connects this thought. Cells that refuse to die are called cancer cells. The splitting of the dividing cell, which lies at the base of all living things, is also reflected in the film - both directly and in the form of a metaphor.
The general mystery of what is happening and the lack of explanations greatly increase the requirements for the ending - what will the heroes find on this lighthouse after all. Many films failed on it - they let in fog, they made riddles, but the finale was so banal and pale, and the riddles were so boring and delusional that the whole previous path depreciated. I think everyone will remember many examples of such disappointments in the finals. Even the "Sunshine" of Garland itself for me is partly in this category. "Event Horizon", however, is a more unambiguous and vivid example.
Nevertheless, this time, Garland manages. The final is wild, unusual and memorable. He answers far from all questions and the very ending even the actors in the film understand each in their own way, but to say that this is a piled up "prestige" of focus cannot be.
I watched this film expecting an horror movie, without knowing anything about it. I was surprised and intrigued the first 15 minutes but then totally lost for 1h30. It was beautiful but very boring. And I still don't know what it was about...
No you're not the only one. It's a drivel with failed script, that should've never been filmed. It's a pointless exercise in mystery thriller with too much ambition and too little essence.
You say that this movie is boring, but imagine that I had to watch it twice not to understand its meaning but to see what I had missed, such as the tattoo on the arm of Natalie Portman's character or Oscar Isaac's arm that is very similar to the bear that imitates or copies the voices of its victims.
Enjoy this film, I think it could have been better if it had been done in a 5 episode mini-series and unlike you, I think I like to search more than I have missed on the internet and so I can better understand the stories.
Hiii...gooddream
Great Post with Great Information.
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