The plot takes a while to develop into the full sci-fy/horror/thriller that this movie most deffenitly IS! The build up is needed very much, so we can get into John's mind. It was also a hit at the festivals, which usually is a good indicator. A very enjoyable movie to day the least!
i didn't expect this to actually be a monster movie
Not surprisingly, as its graphic violence is perpetrated by (and eventually directed against) children, Who Can Kill a Child? was very controversial at the time of its release and even banned in several countries. While undeniably chilling, however, the film’s violence is neither gratuitous nor exploitative. It is in the service of a deeply serious meditation on the failure of the old in their moral responsibility to the young—a failure made clear by the movie’s prolog, which catalogues twentieth-century atrocities (the Holocaust and the Vietnam War among them) that, although engineered by adults, had a devastating impact on children. The film implies that the massacre of the old at the hands of the young should be viewed as an act not of senseless murder but of self-preservation.
Spanish mystery thriller about a couple taking in a traumatized little girl with strange behaviors. Starts as a slowburn drama and ends with a wild third act. It started strong and the mystery was intriguing but it got so slow towards the middle that I lost interest. I liked the idea of the chalk lines and the child actor did great.
I was plenty interested in this one at the beginning, but once the main character (Lena) joined up with the group of girls it slowly made its way downhill for me.
I found this under a thriller genre list and was expecting the sci-fi aspect as well from the (very) brief description, but not the horror. The other characters came across as so flat and almost; I dunno, generic and cookie cutter like? Standard, overused, vague personalities. I suppose the writers didn't feel like putting any effort into them. I couldn’t remember their respective names; I kept getting them mixed up when I didn't just forget them entirely. (Not much of a spoiler right here; I just like to try and allow others to make up their own minds about some details and not be potentially influenced by what they've read beforehand.)
Things increasingly became ultra weird and creepy and wayyy too long and drawn out. The last 30-45 minutes were the worst. I was getting bored and anxious for it to just be over already. The ending was essentially a non-ending; a big build up to a two second non-surprising surprise.
As a big lover of rainbows and iridescence, I was a bit disappointed that “the shimmer” and its effects turned out to be so horrifying. I was hoping for the possibility that it was just a misunderstood phenomenon at first and a mystery to unravel, but actually be good for humanity; not destroy it.
I’m skimming over other reviews on IMDb right now and while the movie has a notably decent overall rating, it seems I’m not alone in feeling that this was tedious as hell to get through. Many didn't feel that way and loved this, but many also hated it. I felt that Ex Machina (done by the same director) was a decent film and I chose to watch it a second time. Under the Skin has also been mentioned alongside this film. While I rated that a 6 for various reasons, I didn't actually care for it personally (more like a 4) and wouldn't give it another go. I don't suppose that helps you decide whether or not to watch Annihilation for yourself, but maybe? I also read this was based on a book and that the film finale was drastically changed from it. I might look into it out of curiosity.
Oh! And how could I forget? In order to throw in some sexuality/bare skin they put in an utterly pointless scene where it's revealed that the main character was a fucking cheater. Her partner in crime loved his wife though. rolls eyes
Well this was really bizarre. It's one of those movies that you know is going to be crazy, but after it's done you realize that you actually had no idea. Anyway the movie is great, and actually has some pretty cool messages, besides being completely nuts.
So, if you feel like watching something different and disturbing, but at the same time hilarious - this is it. You will not regret it.
This movie was dumb and honestly kind of bad, but it was bad and dumb on purpose and I loved every second of it, so that's okay. Amazing performance from Mr. Cage, it takes skill to do a whole movie with no lines at all and still convey personality. Beth Grant was fantastic as always, and everyone else was suitably over the top. It was great, definitely keeping it around to watch when I need a laugh.
People are sleeping on this movie honestly
That's a great movie. Ever wondered how colonialism in the 2nd half of the 20th century in a country not very far away looked like? Watch this movie and the conflict from the perspective of those who were colonized. It was ugly. Guerilla warfare is brutal. Then watch La Haine and draw the line for yourself.
B/w looks great in HD. Ennio Morricone again on fire!
As timeless, pertinent and empowering now, as it was 60 odd years ago
yikes.. this movie is all over the place. very hard to follow.
This is a spoiler, but also a moment - a scene that I found very poignant, and I believe put a bow-tie on the story. Just read the bold-faced words if TL;DR: At the end, amongst the, "Book People," those who commit one book to memory (and become that book, living to mirror it's story) an elderly man on his death bed is seen passing on his chosen book to a young nephew.... He reads a passage then the boy repeats it. The passage we hear is of the old man saying he does not believe he loved his Father, and that his Father died as he feared during the first snows. It is early Fall...then the scene changes to early Winter. And, as the boy is seen reciting the same passage on his own, we see the old man has just passed away as the first snows fall. A self-fulfilling prophecy; a perfect mimicry of the fiction become real. So sad in a certain light, but also so beautiful. And, interweaving with the others walking about, re-reciting their books endlessly to preserve them, our protagonist Montag and Clarisse his true dance partner fall into step briefly, separate then again walk alongside one another.
I think I saw this as a preteen watching, "Creature Features," double-headers on KTVU hosted by Bob Wilkins, although between channel 2, 11, 20 & 36, I usually watched horror and science-fiction movies through a weekend night until channel sign-offs early the next morning. No wonder I could only read those genres of literature. No wonder I can't differentiate the books from the movies. I've seen this eight times now.
It may be klunky, and the classic Bernard Herrmann soundtrack may be jarring, but this is a great film.
This is a fun and charming film. The story may seem a little dated for Western viewers but it feels like an important entry for Indian Queer Cinema. Excellent cast with some great music, too.
Though I watched it for the second time now, it still surprised me how Takumi raised his voice and stood up for himself when Gii "wanted" them to stop meeting. So proud. On the other hand, I never understood characters with a sudden change of behaviour who're not willing to tell their friends or loved ones the cause of their change - Gii simply chose to be cold and ignorant towards them.
[5.4/10] The benefit of the cinematic form is that it’s malleable. A great movie can be a self-serious naturalistic drama or a zany, loosely-plotted comedy. It can have a tight three act structure or it can have a messy spillover of events that fit a different tone. You can do a million things with two-hours of screen time in a million different ways, and as a reviewer, I try to keep myself open and generous to the new and different ways inventive auteurs find to take advantage of the medium.
But the problem with Annihilation is that the things it's good at -- its visuals and its final, captivating sequence -- feel disconnected from the ways in which it is a movie. If you stripped this film for parts and just extracted certain images or scenes, you would find compelling bits and pieces. And yet, as an all-encompassing piece of art meant to tell a story, meant to introduce characters, meant to make you care about what’s going on from the first minute to the last, it falls woefully short.
The film tells the story of Lena, an ex-soldier/biologist who ventures into a mysterious zone called “The Shimmer” to try to find out what happened to her dying husband. She teams up with four other scientist/soldiers to investigate the bizarre happenings inside, where no communications can reach the outside world and from which no one has ever returned. The expedition goes predictably awry quickly, with Lena and her crew finding signs of other failed attempts while they try to make sense of the unknown phenomena all around them.
The result comes off like a Predator clone as presented by David Lynch. That description may sound exciting, or at least interesting, but the truth is that for it’s first hundred minutes or so, Annihilation is a remarkably boring film given its premise. Generic military types with barely-sketched personalities wander anonymously through the jungle where little of substance happens between the occasional, solid set piece. Director Alex Garland can’t spice up his standard issue, Star Trek-esque “hey, there’s some freaky stuff going down on that planet” narrative with anything approaching real character or intrigue. It leaves the whole exercise feeling like an hour and a half of treading water to justify the film’s grand, final showpiece.
That showpiece is a doozy. If you lopped off just “The Lighthouse” segment of the movie, apart from the doldrums of the setup and the ponderousness of the frame story, it would be an incredible short film. The demoscene-esque symmetry and variation of the energy blob that Lena confronts, the Del Toro-esque figure who consumes her teammate and withstands her bullets, the mirroring alien creature that moves just so and eventually erupts into a singular immolation, all grab the viewer’s attention and evince a mood and a vision that are abstract, palpable, and transcendent, but all but missing elsewhere in the film.
The worst part of the whole endeavor is the dialogue. There’s a thudding quality to almost every exchange, where people declare exactly what they’re thinking, robotically convey some exposition that’s already obvious to anyone with a brain, or speak in bland action movie clichés. There’s always some artifice to movie dialogue, but holy hell, nobody in the world talks like this. I initially wanted to attribute it to the stupefying effects of The Shimmer, but the truth is that everyone in the movie speaks in the same awkward, stilted rhythms regardless of where they’re in the alien zone or not. The merits of this film are far and away on the visual side, and it seems like the verbal side was massively neglected by comparison.
The runner up in that department is the characters. No individual’s personality is depicted through action, everyone’s backstory is just announced, either by another character or through the patently unnecessary frame narrative. But hey, that’s OK, because everyone is a flat, stock archetype anyway, whom you’ll forget as soon as they’re picked off or disappear or get transmogrified into something else. Even Lena, who should be compelling given her losses and purpose, is a weird blank space in the middle of the film, barely defined despite being the nominal driver of the action.
That action, thankfully, isn’t bad. Apart from that impressive final sequence, the only thing to really recommend Annihilation is its production design and aesthetic, with remixed flora and fauna that stand out amid the film’s otherwise soporific qualities. True to a film starring Natalie Portman, there’s a bit of a Star Wars prequel vibe to some of the CGI, but most of it is forgivable, and when the lights go low and the digital seams don’t show, the film’s capable of some real terror and awe.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for its mystery and themes. It becomes clear what’s going on within The Shimmer fairly quickly -- that whatever this entity is has been remixing and mashing up the various inputs its found on our planet is. But that doesn't stop our heroes from wandering around and puzzling over it for god knows how long. By the same token, the film tries to connect everything to a grand theme of unconscious self-destruction being our downfall, cellularly and socially, rather than external malady or directive choice. But while it’s an interesting idea, it’s lost in a sea of tepid scenes and tin-eared dialogue trying to dramatize it.
That’s the overarching problem with Annihilation. It fails at the things that you need to sustain a film: character, story, theme, pacing, dialogue, intrigue. But it succeeds at the things that could exist apart from the structure and be just as good, namely the raw imagery of the piece and the almost baletic, psychedelic sequence at the end which the audience only vaguely needs the backstory provided to appreciate. There’s things worth salvaging from this film -- bravado sequences that almost justify the experience -- but they come apart from, or at the expense of, the things essential to the form.
Annihilation is an interesting, occasionally astounding art project, but it’s not much of a movie.
