Annihilation tense and terrifying

Natalie Portman in Annihilation. Image courtesy Paramount Pictures.

Annihilation comes ever so close to being a brilliant piece of science fiction. The movie is a fascinating existential thriller overloaded with tension and hopelessness to go along with its strange creatures and otherworldly locale. It has a lot to say about the mind, body, and soul, but it loses itself when it speaks as often as it does without allowing the wonder to creep in. Instead of inspiring thoughts and allowing the imagination to go wild, Annihilation tries to control the conversation, much to its detriment.

Words convey only so much for a science fiction movie; exploration in every sense of the word is of greater importance. To his credit, writer/director Alex Garland's, who adapted the eponymous novel, has the structure for the type of adventure needed for Annihilation to succeed. Garland keeps things simple with the story, trimming the novel to focus on five women assigned to explore a great unknown hiding behind a strange shimmering wall. Four of them (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, and Tuva Novotny) are assigned to investigate the source of the shimmer that is constantly consuming more and more land. The fifth, Lena (Natalie Portman), enters to find out what happened to her husband (Oscar Isaac) and to atone for her past misdeeds. It's just five women, walking through a new world where things are just close enough to normal to seem familiar, yet are still miles away from being normal. And it doesn't take long for things to start falling apart.

Annihilation reaches into the basic fears people have about themselves and their identities and brings those fears right in front of the viewers' eyes. The body horror is rendered more terrifying by the existential crisis surrounding Lena and her comrades. They become lost to something greater than they are, begin to lose the little things that make them human, which in turn makes them, and the audience by extension, even more confused and frightened. What they discover is the horror of the great unknown, the absence of certainty and the uncontrollable shifts in their being that breaks them down from the inside out. It makes for an intense movie, and Garland cranks the suspense up to around a 12 by the middle of the second act. Annihilation becomes really, really uncomfortable right around the time when the really bad things begin to happen to the protagonists, and it gets downright frightening in one really discomfiting scene in which nature attacks with shrieks and wails and teeth and nails. Twenty years ago that scene would have led to numerous nightmares on my end; now it'll be just a night or two of bad dreams.

That scene is followed by an explanation for the cause of the fear, and the definition is somewhat terrifying in its own right. But it is part of a larger struggle Garland has with Annihilation and balancing how much of an explanation he owes to the audience for the movie's oddities. In lieu of showing and implying, Garland has characters speak often in exposition for the audience's benefit, which results in emotional removal from the oddities taking place on screen. The problem extends to the narrative structure, which greatly reduces the urgency and ambiguity Annihilation strives to attain. It undercuts the film's best parts; the deterministic moments when the characters trudge forward with the same amount of uncertainty as the viewer

Garland ultimately shoots himself in the foot by keeping viewers at least a step or two outside of the world he built, although that might have been a little intentional. For a Sci-Fi movie about an uncontrolled mutation the visualization is a bit lackluster. Annihilation depicts an Earth slowly but surely morphing into something more alien but still slightly connected to the human world. Yet the film's environment doesn't feel overly alien because viewers are not indoctrinated into the bizarre terrestrial version of our planet. Annihilation is so consumed by its explanations it fails to bring viewers along with it into the great unknown. Only the characters are allowed to get lost in this world; the audience is stuck watching from a few miles away from the safety of their seats.

It's difficult not to wish for a little more out of something as outright weird and perturbing as Annihilation. With a better sense of wonder, this movie would be magnificent instead of just interestingly bizarre.

Review: Four out of Five Stars

 

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 115 minutes

Genre: Sci-Fi

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Target audience: Sci-Fi fans and people who were really into Ex Machina.

Take the whole family?: This is way too eerie and bloody for kids.

Theater or Netflix?: Theater isn't vital, but it's definitely worth a matinee trip.

How scary is this movie?: It isn't quite traditional horror, but the overarching vibe is terrifying. The scene referenced in the review is bothersome on many levels, as are the fates of a few of the characters. People who are bothered by jump scares and more traditional frights will be fine; it's the folks who overthink movie universes who will receive a spate of bad dreams.

Watch this as well?: Annihilation shares a few similarities with Apocalypse Now, with both targeting the thin line between sanity and mayhem. There are also a few similarities with John Carpenter's The Thing, which is always great to watch.

Dreamy legacy at the heart of Jackie

Natalie Portman in a scene from Jackie. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.

The smartest part of the heartfelt, melancholy Jackie rests in its unorthodox storytelling. Beginning with an interview between Jackie Kennedy (played brilliantly by Natalie Portman) and a disheveled reporter (Billy Crudup), the film mixes and matches events occurring somewhere between a couple of years before to a few weeks after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. It's an effective nesting doll effect, a story being told within a story told within a story, that mirrors the perception of the White House at that time as a beacon shining at a brighter future. That the unseemly facts get lost in the perception befits a film in which the broader scope is of greater import than the ugly details that only distract from the hopeful veneer.

In Jackie, the illusion of a concept is more trustworthy than the reality. The film's underlying brutality and the days surrounding it are portrayed in a less straightforward manner than the fantasy Portman's Jackie forces Crudup's nameless reporter to accept. That fantasy is based heavily on the idea of Camelot (rooted in the mythology and the musical), a utopia consisting of hopes and desires for a better tomorrow. Previous portrayals of the Kennedy family have used the Kennedy's love of the musical Camelot in an ironic fashion, using the innocent dreaminess of the concept of the show to contrast brightly with the true, more salacious nature of the relationship. That Camelot the show is more about the destruction of a kingdom and its ideals rather than the growth of one is often looked over when comparing it to the Kennedy White House, and the film shows how Jackie uses the illusion of the concept of Camelot to sell the Kennedy legacy. It's a lie built upon a lie that has an inkling of truth just underneath it all: Legends outlive and outgrow the details.

Jackie understands that better than anyone else around her, and a fair amount of the fighting she does in this film is directed at reinforcing and maintaining the image of her husband as a man and president. The version Portman plays is a hell of a fighter too, despite her voice never rising above a strong whisper. She's canny and clever, using her quiet demeanor as a key weapon in her battles against officials with more experience and more power than she would, whether it’s Bobby Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard) or Lyndon B. Johnson (John Carroll Lynch). She knows how the game is played and in particular the right buttons to press to end up on top of an argument. This comes across most in the interview between Kennedy and the reporter, with Portman’s character shown as the dominant force in the conversation. Jackie as manipulator is meant to contrast against the poised, pretty and precise First Lady the film shows in a re-creation of her famed televised White House tour. That Jackie, guided by her friend Nancy (Greta Gerwig), is tied inextricably to the Kennedy legacy, a devoted woman and lover of the arts who could serve as the perfect queen to John Kennedy's king. It's the most false and the most honest version Jackie uses, the blatant falseness of the act a means toward preserving the aforementioned legacy. The clothes and immaculate styling she underwent to create that image are what made her the cultural icon she became.

There is a third representation offered by director Pablo Larrain and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim for one night. It comes in a sequence after the assassination with Jackie alone in the White House wandering about with lots of alcohol and little idea of what else she should do. She's lost and alone, unsure of what she should be doing now or the days and months thereafter. Her facade means nothing in an empty house, but she's still frantically trying to find something that will work her through the grief. It's a heartbreaking sequence queued up by Richard Burton's rendition of Camelot, the song from the show with the most idealized version of the eponymous kingdom.

What Jackie does with all these components – the legacy, the depths of Jackie Kennedy, the historical significance of the moment – is cook them together so separating the truth from the illusion is quite difficult. And that's the way the film wants it and the reason it opts to end not with the death of a president or a woman alone crying, but of a perfect moment supporting the idea of a beautiful ersatz Camelot where, perhaps, joy is found within the illusion.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Rating: R

Run time: 99 minutes

Genre: Biography

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Target audience: Viewers interested in anything related to the Kennedy clan.

Take the whole family?: The rating is a little harsh given the content. Still, kids will be bored by the content on screen, and there is one scene that is graphic.

Theater or Netflix?: It justifies a cinema trip, but feel free to wait for it if you can't find it locally.

How are the Kennedy accents?: The only one you really get to hear is Peter Sarsgaard's, and it is a pretty weak attempt. The issue for Sarsgaard is the lack of consistency to his Brahmin inflection, which is patchy at best. Folks who've lived around Boston know vocabulary, mood, tone and level of sobriety can influence when the accent pops out, although none of those appear to be a factor for Sarsgaard's Bobby Kennedy.

Watch this as well?: Thematically speaking there are a few parallels between this film and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Both films deal with the formations of legends and how becoming one isn't necessarily for the best. That's also hit upon in the documentary Smash His Camera, which profiles famed Jackie Kennedy paparazzo Ron Galella.