Annihilation is the type of movie I generally like. I like movies about the unknown, movies set in the wilderness, adventure movies, (most) science fiction movies, and movies that typically involve humans as prey. After making just $20 million at the box office, Paramount Studios had questions similar to those I had after researching. They didn’t know how to market the movie correctly because they didn’t see the purpose of the movie. It was hardly promoted. It wasn’t screened until just before its release. Paramount didn’t even try to market it domestically, instead, it chose to sell it to Netflix. I admit that there wasn’t much of a chance that I was going to miss it. I was intrigued by the first trailer (as I said, this is the type of movie I usually enjoy). It starred two of my favorite actors. These are Natalie Portman (Black Swan, Jackie) and Oscar Isaac (A Most Violent Year, Life Itself). The trailer almost made the movie seem like Predator with a paranormal twist. I was all in with this premise in my head. But it was far less like Predator and more like the God-awful Predators than anything else.

Lena (Portman) is the star of this film. But like all of the characters in this film, she felt rather one-dimensional. So we meet her when she is being questioned by a guy named Lomax (Benedict Wong – The Martian, Moon) in a full hazmat suit. About three dozen others are watching this interview, all wearing full hazmat suits, even though only three are in the same room as Lena. They are worried that she may be radioactive. Lena is a biologist who was part of a five-woman expedition that, four months prior, was sent into a mysterious energy field called The Shimmer, which is a landmass from outer space that planted itself in a Florida swampland and produced a kind of energy that distorted the DNA of all living things (plant, animal, and human life). This will prove to be a recurring (and often gross) theme throughout the movie.

Lena has just returned from her voyage. We learn that she is the sole survivor of the mission. She isn’t aware of this. She knows that two of the four were killed but is unaware of what happened to the other two. Likewise, she has no answer when it is reported that she’s been gone for four months. In her head, she was gone for days and, at most, a couple of weeks. Lena was a late addition to the mission. Her husband Kane (Isaac) had been on a military mission earlier. It was presumed that he was killed in action after nobody heard from him for over a year. She is in mourning but won’t believe he is dead until she sees the dead body. So imagine her surprise when he shows up at the house one day out of the blue after what he perceives is just a few weeks away. But he’s not the same man he was when he left. We see this through a successful flashback sequence that shows the young couple playfully falling in love. He’s jovial. She’s carefree. They haven’t a single worry in the world, and their lives revolve around one another. As I say in many of my reviews, when flashbacks are done correctly, they enhance the quality of the movie. That was the case here. We needed to see how much The Shimmer changed Kane to give Lena a reason for exploring this unknown phenomenon to get at the heart of what has taken her husband away from her and see if she can do anything to get him back. However, the problem with the film lies herein.

1. Kane has been gone for a year (even if it seems like just a few weeks to him). Lena has been mourning his loss the entire time. Then, suddenly, he appears home, physically intact (at first) but out of his mind. And now she decides it’s time to start her journey?
2. She’s a biologist who works at Johns Hopkins University. But now, she’s fully equipped with a machine gun without any training to suggest she’s military-ready for this mission, much less physically, mentally, emotionally, etc.
3. This Shimmer thing has just returned the only man from a military mission deemed a failure after a year of no communication. If a military operation was so unsuccessful, why do these five individuals think they will succeed using the same tactics? They are walking into Area X as if you, three of our friends, and I were entering our local National Park for a three-hour hike. There’s no way anyone would allow these five to enter The Shimmer like this, yet they casually stroll to the area, unfrightened by what happened to Kane or any of the other new events of the last three years.

The goal is to get to “The Lighthouse” of The Shimmer. The Lighthouse is the nucleus of the whole operation, and it’s believed to be where most of the answers will be found. If this were the case, would I go in with tanks, planes, or parachuters with grenades, guns, etc.? Of course, I would. But then we wouldn’t have a movie. This is where the continuity and believability of Annihilation could come into question, which then affects its delivery and execution. It is unfathomable that this group of five would be allowed to enter The Shimmer after Kane’s operation proved to end the way it did. And to send a biologist in there with a guy? A biologist at that who is a trauma-suffering wife of the man who just returned from that previous mission after being presumed dead for a year? It didn’t add up, and I couldn’t see past it.

The four women joining Lena on the expedition are Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh – Single White Female, Rush), physicist Josie (Tessa Thompson – Creed, Selma), paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez – Deepwater Horizon), and geologist Cass (Tuva Novotny – Borg Vs. McEnroe, Eat Pray Love) all with guns, all looking like five scientists getting dressed up for Halloween. At first, Area X resembles a beautiful and seemingly peaceful fluorescent forest. But then there is an attack by a massive albino alligator with shark teeth. It’s a cross-species creature that shouldn’t exist, much like the genetically mutated plant life that infests the entire area – different types of flowers grow from the same stem, which should be, as Lena quickly points out, impossible. And events like this pile one upon another in freakier and scarier ways. The coolest part of the movie is seeing how impossible DNA structures become possible. Sometimes, it’s pretty gross, but it’s always fascinating.

At this point, the movie becomes your typical survival movie with the added paranormal element. But it isn’t always the five scientists battling the elements of nature. Nature’s elements begin to affect them, and past turmoils in their lives manifest themselves as the women start to turn on each other. It could be better and help the continuity of the movie. In the end, it’s that lack of continuance, believability, and one-dimensional characters that hurt this film. It isn’t the directing as much as it is the story. And Jeff VanderMeer could be a better version of the story than the film. It’s like The Maze Runner in the sense that you can get caught up in this make-believe world, but when you put this make-believe into the real world, you realize there is no place, physically, for it. That’s what happened here, and it affected the entire movie. Not even Garland’s direction or the outstanding performances of Portman and Isaac could save this script that was “big screen doomed” from the start.

Interesting concept + excellent originality – poor execution – lack of continuity = a disappointing skip