My Thoughts on “Annihilation” (2018)

 

(This is the poster for Annihilation (2018).) 

 

 

 

We finally come to the final review for October 2026, Annihilation (2018). This is Alex Garland's second film as director after he made his debut with the 2014 sleeper hit, Ex Machina, which I haven't seen and I'm still not sure if I actually want to watch that movie even after seeing this movie. Even I didn't hate this movie by any means, it didn't convince me that I would like Ex Machina or his other movies after this. He of course went onto direct two movies, both of them for A24 and both of them war movies released a year apart from each other, Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024), which is a sci-fi movie about a hypothetical second American civil war 🇺🇸 taking place in modern day, and Warfare (2025), a movie set during the Iraq War 🇮🇶 that focuses on a platoon of Navy SEALs during the Battle of Ramadi. He didn't direct that movie on his own, he actually co-directed it with a guy ♂︎ named Ray Mendoza, who was actually a Navy SEAL in real life and he did serve in Iraq 🇮🇶, and the movie from what it serves draws on his own personal experiences. It's kind of autobiographical in some way. 

 

I am a bit hesitant to watch either Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024) or Warfare (2025). Both kind of for political reasons. But not in the way you'd think. The reason why I'm hesitant about watching Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024) is because Alex Garland said in interviews in the lead up to that movie's release that, in addition to being a tribute to journalist and a message about the importance of journalists and journalism, it was a commentary on American political polarization 🇺🇸. The journalism part doesn't bother me, it's the polarization part that bothers me. Because Alex Garland said in a lot of those same interviews, and reviewers who saw the movie and reviewed confirmed this, that the movie doesn't actually delve into American politics 🇺🇸, it doesn't actually delve into any of the reasons why Americans 🇺🇸 are polarized. 

 

It doesn't delve into the conflict between left and right wing politics in America 🇺🇸, it doesn't delve into radicalization or extremism, especially right wing extremism and radicalization, it doesn't delve into the culture war, it doesn't delve into racism, or sexism, or homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia, or anything. It's just that they're polarized. And to me that seems very cowardly. What that tells me that is Alex Garland was too chicken shit to go all the way with his political commentary. You know, you want to make a movie about how Americans 🇺🇸 are so polarized that they could literally go to war with each other, and the whole country can ripped apart if we don't get it together and if we Americans 🇺🇸 don't someway to reunite and become one nation again, but you aren't willing to actually delve into the real reasons why Americans 🇺🇸 are polarized 🤦‍♂️. 

 

All because you don't want to offend one side of the political spectrum over the other, and you want this play to as wide of an audience you can, so it can make money 💵 and you get good reviews, and you don't get any backlash, especially from the anti-woke crowd, who were already ready to hate it. As long as they learned of the movie's existence, as soon as the first trailer dropped, and as soon as the first poster dropped, they were already calling it "woke," and were ready to make 50 or more videos about why this movie sucks and why it sucks because it's woke. That just makes what political message you were trying to have with the movie seem toothless. It tells me that you are not actually equipped to handle such a message and its implications, and you aren't equipped to deal with any backlash that may come from it, especially the right wing since let's face it, it's the right wing that's the problem in America 🇺🇸. 

 

It's the problem in every country that has political polarization and is at risk of some degree of democratic backsliding. Alex Garland's own country, the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 has its own problems with right wing extremists, racism, xenophobia, sexism, every form of bigotry you can imagine, and it has a problem with political polarization, and is at risk of democratic backsliding. Sure, it may not be as bad as in the United States 🇺🇸, but it's a situation of the pot calling the kettle black, or throwing stones in glass houses. Pick your metaphor or saying. I may not really like Honest Trailers anymore, I think they've kind of gone downhill and I think they kind of suck now (their writing stinks), but they were correct when they said that the UK 🇬🇧 has the only other country in the world with politics more embarrassing than ours. 

 

Every European on the Internet 🛜 who comments on videos talking about American politics 🇺🇸 and talking about the state of the country under Trump likes to act all morally superior, like they think they're better than us, they look down on us, they say that our country sucks and that it's gone downhill, while they are so much better off. They're living in safe, stable countries, not that dangerous, unstable hellhole that the United States 🇺🇸 has become. When in reality, they've got political problems too, and they are just as bad if not worse than ours. I mean France 🇫🇷 is literally burning 🔥 right now, they're experiencing massive national protests 🪧 against the government and their handling of the economy, high gas prices ⛽️, and pretty everything that everyone in the First World is complaining about and dealing with, and there are clashes between the police and protesters 🪧. 

 

Serbia 🇷🇸 just ousted their president in a nationwide student protest 🪧, a youth protest 🪧. Then there's whatever the hell's going on in Poland 🇵🇱 and the Czech Republic 🇨🇿, which has pro-Russian prime minister 🇷🇺 now. And of course, there's the issue of the Ukraine war 🇺🇦 and the looming threat of Russia 🇷🇺. Anyone who thinks Europe has their shit together while the US 🇺🇸 is just falling apart doesn't know what they're talking, and every European who acts all high and mighty and acts as if they're superior to us is a hypocrite. The entire First World, the entire Western world, the entire Global North, whatever you want to call it is a mess, and not exactly in the best of shape. Things are getting better in some western countries, while things are getting much worse. Worse than anyone could have imagined, 10, 20 years ago. 

 

Our world is changing, and a lot of us are having difficulties adapting to that changing world. Keeping up with it. We're all so scared, where all these changes will lead us. We hope it will lead us to a better place, that is not certain. It is not set in stone, it is not guaranteed. That I think explains what's going in America 🇺🇸 and Europe and how people on both sides of the Atlantic are reacting to it, and let's just say they aren't taking it well. Americans 🇺🇸 are convinced their country is collapsing, while Europeans seem to be convinced that America 🇺🇸 is collapsing, but all of its problems are self-inflicted and insular and don't have any barring on Europe. Like, they're just watching the trash fire 🔥 from a distance and either condemning it or criticized, acting all anxious and scared about it, or just laughing at it. 

 

They all seem to be convinced that everything's fine on their end, and they don't have any problems of their own, and it's only America 🇺🇸 that has problems, they get be on their high horse 🐎 judging us, and acting superior to us. Like, "you did this to yourselves, you deserve what you get, and you can't be trusted anymore, we're done with you. Europe is rising while America 🇺🇸 is falling." When they couldn't be any more wrong. I personally a lot of Europeans are lying to themselves when they act like America 🇺🇸's falling apart while Europe is doing fine, and judge us Americans 🇺🇸 for making the wrong decision and putting Trump back into power, despite all the warnings and wisdom to the contrary. Even the ones who didn't vote for him, even the ones who recognized Trump's threat to the country and the world, and voted for Kamala Harris instead, and did all we could to keep him out of power. 

 

They've got problems too, some of them worse than even us, and they seem to refuse to acknowledge it. It's easier to ignore your own when you have another country's problems to point to and gawk at, judging the people of that country, and acting all high and mighty. I also hate it when Europeans ask us, "Why you aren't doing enough? Why aren't you protesting 🪧? Why haven't you kicked Trump out office yet? Why aren't you more outraged about what's happening to your country?" They act like we're doing nothing, even though we are doing something. We have been protesting 🪧, nationwide, some of the biggest protests 🪧 in the country's history, we've been making a stink of it online on social media and on YouTube and other video platforms, we've made our voices heard and we've made it very clear that we aren't happy about this, we're angry about what's going on and we hate this fucking government that a certain number of us put into power 😤. 

 

And I don't know if you've noticed, but we're in the middle of a midterm election 🗳️, where we will get the chance to oust every Republican in the legislature, to punish them for doing Trump's bidding, and to weaken Trump's political power and make him less about to push through his horrible agenda and to reduce him to nothing more than a lame duck. A lame duck who talks incoherently, who throws temper tantrums, and posts AI slop all night, but still a lame duck. What more do you want us to do? Do you want us to start some kind of violent revolt and kill Trump and everyone in his administration? Or you would just condemn us for that too and say that we're too violent and unstable to be trusted again, and you can't do business with us or have kind of relationship with us whatsoever? I don't see you starting any violent revolts against your shitty governments, I doubt you even have the guts to do such a thing. 

 

Why aren't you doing more 🫵 to resolve your problems, why aren't you doing more about your shitty governments and politicians, or your shitty politics, or the myriad of other problems in your countries? You see how easily this can be turned around and turned against you? You see why this type of complaining/questioning infuriates me 😤? We are doing the best the way we can in the system that we're operating in, in the environment that we're currently operating in, and you are doing the same. We're going to resolve our problems the exact same way and at the exact same speed, and we shouldn't be expected to. All I ask from Europeans, any who may be reading this to cut us some slack, and stopping doubting at every single turn or acting like every American 🇺🇸 is on board with what's going on because we're not. Just as I'm sure you're not on board with what's going on in your countries. 

 

The reason why I'm hesitant to watch Warfare (2025) is a little bit more complicated, but also not. It's a movie that depicts the Iraq War 🇮🇶, the third most controversial war in American history 🇺🇸 after Vietnam 🇻🇳 and now Iran 🇮🇷, and my concern is that it won't portray the war in the right way. In the accurate way. That it'll try to paint the Americans 🇺🇸 are the pure good guys and as always in the right, like they're the morally righteous one in this situation and in this war, and it's only the terrorists who are the bad guys, and that the insurgency wasn't really an insurgency, but was just a bunch of terrorists. It'll try to paint the conflict in a more black and white way, rather than the complex morally grey conflict that it actually was, and it'll appeal to right wing/conservative sensibilities about the military and it will fully portray the militaries as the 100% morally right good guys who never did anything wrong and were always in the right, and that the Iraq War 🇮🇶 really was all about protecting American freedom and democracy 🇺🇸. Not that a lot of conservatives or right wingers even care about those things anymore. 

 

They pretend they do, but a lot of them actually don't. If they didn't, they wouldn't be supporting a guy ♂︎ like Trump and sticking by him no matter what. Even when he makes mistakes and put the country in a much worse and more vulnerable position than it had been before. Or, what it'll try to, which a lot of war movies try to do, is it'll try to avoid talking about politics altogether, it will avoiding devolving into the political reasons why the conflict started and talking about the political ramifications of that conflict as it was happening, and just focus on the battle, on the action, the violence, the comradery between the soldiers, or the SEALs in this case, and the emotions, the sadness of the soldiers, or the SEALs dying during this battle. Completely ignoring the reasons why this battle is even taking place, and what these men ♂︎ (and I do mean men ♂︎ since it is usually predominantly men ♂︎ fighting in war, though a lot more women ♀︎ served in Iraq 🇮🇶 as well as Afghanistan 🇦🇫, which was happening the exact same time, than in any other previous war America 🇺🇸 had been directly involved in) were actually fighting for. 

 

War movies that try so hard to be apolitical usually doesn't work out in their favor. They tend not to stand the test of time compared to ones that do get political. You need to delve somewhat into the politics behind a war, especially since war is inherently political. It's politics through other means. And I'm not exactly confident that Warfare (2025) will do that, even though Alex Garland prides himself and his movies on being intellectual and nuanced, because of his co-directing partner, Ray Mendoza. Mendoza might've tried to rein him in, and might've pressured Garland into avoiding getting political in the film even Garland might've wanted to get political. But given how seemingly unwilling Alex Garland was about getting political with Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024), even though the subject matter of that movie is more overtly political and even Warfare (2025)'s is, maybe Garland also wanted to pull back on politics on that movie too, and keep the movie as apolitical as reasonably possible and keep the movie focused on the battle itself. 

 

I wasn't really sure if I was even going to like this movie or not. I heard mixed things about the movie over the years, some people said it was good, while other said it was bad. Some people said it was really smart and even profound, while others said it was just stupid and pretentious. I even heard it was "woke," but of course that's only coming from the anti-woke crowd and it's only because it has a mostly all-female cast ♀︎, but I'll get to it. Back when I was into that stuff, back when I was apart of the anti-woke crowd (back when it called the "anti-SJW crowd"), I'll admit the fact that it had a mostly all-female cast ♀︎ was enough to dissuade me from watching it because back when I was into that stuff, and I was an anti-feminist, I was worried that the movie would have a feminist message ♀︎ and I didn't want to see that. 

 

But I've grown out of that, I'm no longer an anti-SJW, or anti-woke person, or anti-feminist, and I don't mind seeing movies with all-female casts ♀︎, no matter how rare they actually are (even now), and I don't mind if they have feminist messages ♀︎. In fact, I like it. I welcome it. The way I currently see it is that The Thing (1982) had an all-male cast ♂︎, there is not a single woman ♀︎ in that entire movie and plenty of people have pointed that out over the years. I think even John Carpenter realized this (likely from people pointing out so much), which is why he packed the second film in his Apocalypse trilogy, Prince of Darkness with so many women ♀︎, and made them the competent ones even more so than a lot of the men ♂︎ in that movie, to make up for the fact that The Thing (1982) had no women and only men ♂︎. 

 

So, if The Thing (1982) can have all-male cast ♂︎ and no one complains, then Annihilation (2018) can have an all-female cast ♀︎. It's only fair. Why should this movie get criticized and hated on by certain sections of the Internet 🛜 just because it mainly focuses on a team of five women ♀︎, and these five women ♀︎ are the characters we mostly see throughout the film? Of course I'm not suggesting that this movie is anywhere near as good as The Thing (1982), I haven't even seen The Thing (1982), at least not all the way through. I've just seen scenes here and there of it. So I cannot make that determination. I'm just talking about the gender makeup of the casts of both movies. And even the gender makeup of the cast of Prince of Darkness. BTW, I fully intend on reviewing Prince of Darkness sometime in the future. Maybe even next October if I don't get to it a lot sooner. 

 

I just feel like watching it a lot more after seeing more clips from it, watching some reviews and even reactions to it (what few of them there are), and listening to the soundtrack, which is pretty kick ass BTW. It's a John Carpenter score, of course it's going to be good. Of course, he didn't compose it alone, he composed it with Alan Howarth. Either way it's a good score, and it makes you want to see the movie a lot more, especially if you've never seen. Which I'm willing to guess is most people. Less people have seen Prince of Darkness than they have The Thing (1982) or even In the Mouth of Madness, the third and final film in the Apocalypse trilogy. More people have certain done more reaction videos to those two movies than Prince of Darkness. Which is ironic considering that it's one of the few John Carpenter movies that actually turned a profit when it was originally released in theaters. It made $14.3 million 💵 against a budget of $3 million 💵, which was pretty modest even back then. It was his return to independent filmmaking after making big budget studio movies, what can I say? Very few John Carpenter movies can actually make that claim that they turned a profit during their original theatrical runs. 

 

The movie actually does kind of comment on gender roles, though not to the degree that anti-feminist self was worried about back in the day when this originally came out. It's hard to believe that it's been 8 years since this movie came out, it really doesn't feel like it at all. But you know, time flies, especially when you get older. Years go by a lot faster, before you have time to realize. But mainly, I want to see some cool creature stuff. I of course had seen the clip on YouTube of the bear scene 🐻 inside the house, which is probably the most famous scene in this entire movie. It's the scene that everyone remembers, or thinks of whenever they think of this movie. They even put the bear 🐻 on the cover of the steelbook that I bought of this movie that I watched this movie on, though I didn't watch the 4K unfortunately. I had to watch it on the regular Blu-Ray 💿. And I of course saw a clip of the alligator scene 🐊 as well, and both clips made more interested in checking this movie out than before when I didn't know it had any creatures in it. 

 

Even if I didn't like the movie, I could at least enjoy the creature scenes. And while there really aren't that many creature scenes in this movie, only two creature attack scenes, the two that we do get, which are the alligator and bear scenes 🐊🐻, were pretty good. They were both pretty well done, especially the bear scene 🐻. The way the bear 🐻's skull is partially exposed and is fused with a human skull, the way it mimics Cassie's voice, saying "Help me!" to lure in Anya, who is deeply disturbed and has gone insane by that point in the movie, to grab her and kill her. It's probably the best mutated bear 🐻 in a movie besides the one in the movie Prophecy (1979), which is also mainly known and remember for one scene ☝️, the sleeping bag scene, which is more funny than anything else 😄. In an unintentional way, but still pretty funny 😄. 

 

The rest of this movie is a Lovecraftian, or comic horror movie where we're seeing these five women ♀︎ go through this mutated forest 🌳 and seeing mutated plants and animals everywhere. While they all get whittled down one-by-one until only Lena, the main character, is left. Which we already knew she was going to be the lone survivor since this whole movie is told in flashback, and it's her recounting her experience of going into the contaminated area, which is called the Shimmer since this cosmic force or entity that crashed into Earth 🌎 created a massive bubble 🫧 that just keeps expanding, and everything inside of it mutates and turns into a distorted version of itself, and it has rainbow shimmer effect to it. That's why it's even called the Shimmer in the first place. I say "contaminated area" and not just forest 🌳 because the Shimmer covers more than just a forest 🌳, or a swamp. It also encompasses suburbs and even a military base. A US Army base 🇺🇸 called Fort Amaya, which I'm not sure is even a real Army base, but I kind of doubt it. And she's recounting it all to an unnamed scientist wearing a hazmat suit played by Benedict Wong, while other scientists are looking at her and watching her and listening to her talk while the unnamed hazmat scientist asks her questions about her experiences of going inside the Shimmer from inside this quarantined room.

 

But, she didn't exactly come out unscathed, because just like her husband, Kane, her DNA 🧬 also changed by the Shimmer, and is not fully human anymore, and is turning into something else. And that's how the note that the movie ends on. It ends with this ominous feel and feeling of ambiguity as to whether or not the threat of the Shimmer has truly been vanquished, or if it lives on in Lena and Kane. Kane, we for sure isn't human, because earlier on in the movie, he's been missing for 12 months and is presumed by everyone, including Lena, until he just mysteriously reappears at their house again, but acting really strange. You even say, acting completely inhuman 🤨. And then he has a seizure and starts spitting and coughing up blood 🩸, and is driven to the hospital in an ambulance 🚑, until it is stopped by a bunch of police who then take Kane out of the ambulance 🚑 and then transport him and Lena to a government facility or outpost that is closely monitoring the Shimmer and its seem endless expansion. 

 

And Kane spends the rest of the movie bed ridden, until he wakes up at the very end, and hugs Lena, after she asks him if he's really him and he answers "no," and both of their eyes glow pinkish purple. Indicating that neither of the two of them aren't human, or fully human. But we know for sure Kane isn't human because when Lena finally reaches the lighthouse where the meteor ☄️ carrying the Shimmer crashed into, she finds a burnt up carcass of someone holding something in their hands, and there's a camcorder on a tripod 📹 next to it, and she watches the video, and it turns out the corpse belonged to Kane, and he committed suicide using a white phosphorous grenade, and the Kane that came to her house and had a seizure and is in medical care wasn't the real one, it was an intimation created by the Shimmer. I know the filmmakers themselves don't consider the alien 👽 to be the Shimmer and they never refer to it as the Shimmer, and the Shimmer is just an effect of the alien 👽's presence on Earth 🌎, but for the sake of brevity, I'm calling it the Shimmer. So just know that whether I'm talking about the contaminated zone or the alien 👽 itself, I'm using the word "Shimmer." I'll consider them one and the same. I mean, the alien 👽 itself has that shimmer effect to it, it has some of that rainbow glean on it. 

 

The Shimmer was even trying to create a copy of Lena, which is why it was mimicking her and mirroring her perfectly in their final confrontation at the end, so that it can replace her. But, while Lena manages to kill the imitation and the Shimmer itself after she gives it a white phosphorous grenade and pulls the pin out, she herself has been tainted by the Shimmer. Just from being inside it. She learns this during the expedition, after she looks at her blood 🩸 in a microscope 🔬, and sees that the Shimmer is influencing her body and her DNA 🧬 is changing. That didn't stop, even after the Shimmer has been destroyed, it continues. And she continues to lose her humanity even by the end. We can even tell that she's changing and becoming less and less human by the way she acts. How she acts a little bit more robotic, or perhaps a bit more alien 👽 👀, and she seems to justify the Shimmer's "behavior" and its effect on the environment. When the hazmat scientist suggests that it was destroying everything it touches, she corrects him and says, it was changing everything instead. Seems like rationalization to me. Seems like something someone would only say if they were being influenced by the Shimmer in some way, even after it has supposedly been destroyed. 

 

Kane is played by Oscar Isaac, who I completely forgot was even in this. This was back when he was still doing the Star Wars sequels, Star Wars: The Last Jedi to be exact which was the one being filmed while this movie was being filmed, and was still very much a rising star. Which probably explains why he has such a small role in this. I mean, he spends most of it bed ridden, and otherwise only ever appears in flashbacks or in video camera footage 📹. He was still in the process of becoming the star that he is now, even if he isn't really a leading man ♂︎ and is something of a character actor. Being more in supporting roles than leading roles. Which I suppose isn't that crazy since he wasn't the lead in the Star Wars sequels either, he was very much a supporting role. But he didn't quite make the jump to leading role status that everyone expected and he probably envisioned for himself, and is still mostly doing supporting roles. He didn't become the Harrison Ford of the Star Wars sequels and become a leading man ♂︎, that was not the career path for him. And to be honest, really wasn't the career for anyone who was in Star Wars except for Harrison Ford. And maybe Samuel L. Jackson, although he already kind of established by the time he was in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and was in the other two Star Wars prequels. 

 

I guess you could say Natalie Portman became a bigger star after being in the Star Wars prequels, since the biggest role she had done before that was Leon: The Professional, where she was just a child. She was in Mars Attacks! too, where she was a bit older than she was in Leon: The Professional, but it didn't skyrocket her stardom in a way that I think the Star Wars prequels did. It is kind of funny though that both Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac were both in Star Wars, in different trilogies. It is kind of a reunion for them, even if they interacted with each other on screen in those movies since they were in different trilogies that took place during different time periods. I wonder if anyone made any Padmé and Poe Dameron jokes when this movie came out. 

 

People made jokes when Hayden Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson were in Jumper (2008) together, or whenever Aaron Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen were in Godzilla (2014) as husband and wife before playing siblings in Avengers: Age of Ultron, which out the year after. People just like to referring to actors by their character's names from previous movies, especially if it's the only role that they know them from. Like, in the comment section of clips from Tower Heist, everyone refers to the actors/characters in that movie by the names of their characters from animated movies, like Ben Stiller as Alex, Eddie Murphy as Donkey 🫏, Matthew Broderick as Simba (both Ben Stiller and Matthew Broderick voiced lions 🦁 in animated movies funnily enough), and Michael Peña as Tito. 

 

The scene where Dr. Ventress does interrogate Lena does kind of bother me because it's one of those interrogation scenes in a movie where an authority figure of some kind is interrogating the main character, trying to ask them question that pertain to the main plot, but is going about it in the worst possible way imaginable. If they're aren't being argumentative and aggressive than they're being super cryptic and being unwilling to answer any of the main character's questions. Basic questions like "Where am I?" "Who are you?" "What's going on?" "What do you want with me?" "Why did you bring me here?" Things that if you actually answered them and were straightforward and transparent would built trust with the person you're trying to interrogate. But the interrogator in these scenarios often don't do that, and just do everything they can to alienate the person they're questioning, and make them unwilling to cooperate. And Dr. Ventress is no exception. 

 

In fact, I kind of had a problem with Dr. Ventress as a character overall. She acts so weird and robotic, often speaking monotone and very cryptically. Never giving clear straightforward answers to anything, never revealing anything about herself, never revealing her motivations for wanting to go into the Shimmer and find the lighthouse, even when she's having a heart-to-heart talk with someone in as close to private as they can get in the environment or circumstances they're in, and no one ever calls her out on it. No one ever says "she's weird," or "she's closed off and anti-social," and no one treats her any different based on her weird behavior. In fact, everyone treats it like it's completely normal that she's acting this way. The only character who does call her out on it is Anya, who calls her a "crazy old bitch," which is ironic considering that Anya later goes crazy later on in the movie. Driven to insanity by the Shimmer and what she sees and experiences while she's in there, and just cracking under the pressure of what she and the other are trying to do, not even knowing for what purpose or to what end. And she ties them all up and holds them all at gun point, ready to kill any of them if they look at her funny, or say the wrong thing. Not that they can speak considering she gagged them all. 

 

But besides that and the lack of creature action, I would say that, for the most part, this is a pretty solid Lovecraftian horror or cosmic horror movie. It was pretty much the closest thing to a Color Out of Space movie before the actual Color Out of Space movie by Richard Stanley and starring Nicolas Cage came out. Although this movie had a much bigger budget than Color Out of Space, this movie's budget was $40–55 million 💵, whereas Color Out of Space's budget was only $6–12 million 💵. And Lovecraft fans and fans of Lovecraftian and cosmic horror in general seemed to like it a lot more than this movie. And who knows maybe I might like it more than this movie too if I ever decide to watch it and review it. It's funny that I even make that comparison and I even invoke Lovecraft's name at all considering that Alex Garland didn't name H. P. Lovecraft as a major inspiration for this movie. 

 

In fact, he named Alan Moore of all people as a major inspiration, not Lovecraft. He specifically said that the plant statues, the plants that grow in the shape of humans, were something that he pulled straight from Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing. But even if Alex Garland didn't specifically name Lovecraft as an inspiration, consciously or unconsciously, this movie still does have Lovecraft DNA 🧬 within. It still has plenty of Lovecraft influences within it. Pretty much everything in the cosmic horror genre can trace its origins back to H. P. Lovecraft in someway since he pioneered this subgenre of horror. The fear of the unknown, of the unknowable. Things beyond human comprehension that will just drive humanity insane. This movie even has the element of characters being driven insane by what they've seen, and the main threat of the movie being an indescribable, incomprehensible horror. An entity that humans cannot understand, let alone describe. 

 

But, the movie is based on a book 📖, by an author named Jeff VanderMeer. In fact the book 📖 the movie's based on has a sequel, two sequels actually, it's a whole trilogy of books 📚. It's called the Southern Reach Series. The second book 📖 is called Authority while the third book 📖 is called Acceptance. There's also a fourth book 📖, kinda, called Absolution, but the main trilogy just consists of those three books 📚. One of them involves a talking bear 🐻, which I'm not sure how we get there, but it could be a completely different book 📖 that I'm thinking of. I know there's some kind of recent book 📖 that was a sequel to another book 📖 that was adapted into a movie that involved a talking bear 🐻 somehow. I just can't think of which one. 

 

Reading up on each of the books 📚 on Wikipedia, it seems that they took different elements from each of the books 📚 and just added them to this movie, which means that we probably won’t get straight adaptations of the other books 📚 in the series because this movie isn’t a straight adaptation of the first book 📖. It’s not a very faithful adaptation of the book 📖. To Alex Garland’s own admission, it’s a very loose adaptation, so I’m thinking they largely based the story off of the first book 📖, but then added elements from the other books 📚 in the series as well. Such as the leader of the team having cancer, which Dr. Ventress does in this movie, and one of the main characters does in the second book 📖, Authority. 

 

This movie was also made under Paramount and Skydance, long before the two companies merged into one, and then merged with Warner Bros. (who Skydance also collaborated with prior to either merger) soon after 😒. Movies like this, whether intentional or not (probably very unintentional), were a sign of things to come unfortunately 😒. Also, while this movie was released theatrically in the US 🇺🇸 by Paramount, it was released on Netflix everywhere else. Meaning that this is technically a theatrically released movie and a streaming movie. So even before the pandemic 🦠😷, movies were already getting released in theaters and on streaming simultaneously. They were testing it out long before the pandemic 🦠😷 ever happened. 

 

Though they were mostly doing it by releasing them theatrically in one country, while releasing it on streaming in every other country. Usually Netflix because Netflix is the one streaming service that most of the world has. Not every country has Disney+, or Hulu, or Apple TV+, or Paramount+, or HBO Max, or even Peacock 🦚. I would say that of all the movies I watched and reviewed for this blog in the month of October, Beware Boiúna was my absolute favorite, while Onslaught (2026) come in second, and We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️ comes in dead last (no pun intended). While this movie and Colony (2026) fit somewhere in the middle. I would put this movie above Colony (2026), but just slightly above. Very slightly. 

 

 

 

(These are pictures of the 4K/Blu-Ray steelbook 💿 that I bought at Walmart of Annihilation (2018). The first picture of the front cover, the second picture of the back cover with the slip cover thing on, and the third picture is of the back cover without the slip cover thing and showing the artwork that's on the back of the steelbook. It's a gorgeous steelbook in honesty, really terrific artwork 👍. My only complaint, as is with other steelbooks is why the discs 💿 are stored. I actually hate how the discs 💿 are stored on this. Steelbook manufacturers need to stop stacking the discs 💿 on top of each other, and actually make it easier to get the discs 💿 without risking damaging them or getting them dirty. Especially the Blu-Ray discs 💿, the Blu-Ray discs 💿 are always tucked behind the 4K discs 💿 in a little pocket that makes it difficult to take them out without damaging them or getting them dirty. Just put them side-to-side like they do on standard Blu-Rays 💿, it's way simpler and easier. It makes easier to grab the discs 💿 and put them back without damaging them or getting them dirty with fingerprints 🫆.)