Annihilation (2018)★★★☆☆

Okay, honestly, I feel a little bad here. In my head I’m thinking “this is the only Alex Garland I’m really familiar with!” but then it turns out I’m super wrong…I just didn’t realize Alex Garland was involved?

Seriously, it turns out I have READ A NOVEL written by Alex Garland! And looks like I rated that novel 3 stars also. It was mid-2020 when I read it, so I don’t recall exactly how I felt, but I have vague recollections of the novel and even vaguer recollections of the Leonardo DiCaprio movie adaptation (which I believe I saw many years ago, certainly well before reading the novel).

On top of that? Turns out Alex Garland wrote 28 Days Later, as well as Sunshine (which I have seen before) and Men (which I have not), both of which are on the calendar for later this year. AND the screenplay for Never Let Me Go, which I saw in theaters and thought was beautiful.

So I suppose it’s more accurate to say this is the only thing I’ve seen that Alex Garland directed. And I truly think the direction was good here! As well as the cinematography, the acting, and even some of the changes from Jeff VanderMeer’s novel.

I think I saw this movie around when it was released, then read the book, then went back to the movie…but it could be that I just read the book first, then saw the movie. Either way, I think this was an impressive undertaking. There’s a lot in the novel that feels wholly unfilmable - in a good way. I think the changes Alex Garland made helped translate the novel’s atmosphere onto the big screen.

But the novel was a slow, long read, and this movie is a bit of a slow, long watch. So despite the wonderful performances by pretty much everyone, and the fantastically creepy moments (of which there were several) throughout, I wasn’t super impressed with this movie overall.

I think this is probably worth a watch if you’re into high-concept, near-hallucinatory science fiction stories with a bit of (metaphorical) darkness to them. But it’s certainly not a quick, fun romp.