The marketing and trailer of the film suggested a horror movie with a creepy monster. That may well be the case, but this is not a conventional horror film at all - there is far, far more to this outstanding film than that. To say more would give away the plot, but clear hints as to the identity of the “Babadook” and how it fits into the narrative ensure the reveal and resolution are unsurprising. That, though, misses the point - here the journey the audience is taken on is so compelling that the reveal and resolution to the story don’t need to surprise. Essie Davies plays a single mother still coming to terms with the death of her husband and the young Noah Wiseman is her son who is exhibiting behavioural issues. They both give outstanding natural performances and the film is rooted in such verisimilitude that the introduction of the horror element almost feels intrusive. Not that this is unsuccessful either - the “monster’ initially lurks in the shadows, creating a palpable sense of foreboding and dread and the sound design of the film helps to emphasise this, creating some wonderfully creepy moments. Fortunately, rather than worrying about horror conventions and gimmicks to scare, the filmmakers explore far more gripping issues and concerns - that of a mother’s struggle to raise a child on her own and cope with unresolved grief, loss, isolation and helplessness. If there was a minor criticism, it is that the final act occasionally focuses more on the conventions of horror and suspense that had been so carefully balanced throughout. But this is a nitpick at best and doesn’t detract from one of the finest films of the year and a strong message that true horror is as firmly rooted in reality as it is in the supernatural and fantasy.
I always love seeing Australian cinema out there. And movies about demons...spirits etc. They're something I'm especially keen on.
Talk to Me is about Mia, a girl grieving her mother's sudden death two years prior. She is introduced to this unbelievable game that her classmates play where they set a ceramic hand on the table, grasp it and say "talk to me", leading something out there to come to the other side.
This movie doesn't shy away from gore, and it's especially impactful as the characters are teenagers. The tension builds in each scene, almost explosively delivered in horrifying outcomes (especially given the sound mixing and how freaking loud it is). There's not really noticeable music in this film, just the regular bush doof pumping beats but nothing I really enjoyed and it still keeps its jump scares kind of obvious with the sound cues.
The story unravels with really great pacing but I found Mia's character development to be a little weak. I can justify it by seeing her as just a teenager out there, lost and alone. She's an outcast because her family changed, no one can relate to her and she's sad and a downer. She's still grieving her mother and the movie's core concept puts her back at the start of her grief journey. She's drawn in by having a connection to someone, by feeling like she's part of a group...which leads her to make poor choices. I did feel like we needed more growth to come through - she has a found family who love her and care for her but she still almost falls to the words of her spirit mum, she's not able to see what's really surrounding her...and that didn't make that much sense to me. It's obvious she cherishes Riley and Jade, and feels loved by them. so I needed more convincing to believe that the script choices were ones she would make.
I did wonder if her wearing yellow in every scene was just style choices or a symbol of her place in her grief journey and joy...but I'm not sure.
I did really enjoy the ending sequences of the film and how it tied back to its lore. It's a solid film and worth the watch.
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
[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.
I thought Ex Machina was (although flawed) an excellent movie, Annihilation was just crap though. Apart from the outfits, there was nothing even remotely military about any of them, the whole thing just didn't know where it was going or why, it was a huge confused mess. It probably would have made a good TV episode in an anthology show, but just not enough there to make a decent film. It put me in mind of Arrival (easily the worst sci-fi movie of recent times), low-brow junk masquerading as high-brow gold. Both were designed from the ground up to make stupid people think they are really smart. If a film is advertised as 'highly intelligent' they should at least be moderately intelligent, but this doesn't even come close. The fact the ending is somewhat ambiguous and there are several different theories about it doesn't mean the film is cleaver, it just means the ending has more than one interpretation. I'm not saying films should spoon feed you all the answers, in fact, I hate when that happens, It's great being able to contemplate a movie and it's meanings after the fact, the problem here is it gives you so little of worth to actually think about.
when watching 2008’s Crystal Skull that Harrison Ford was too old to play Indiana Jones any more, and I stick by that statement.
CGI scenes early in the movie were clearly done by the 10th grade work experience kid. Where Indy runs on top of the train, I haven’t seen CGI natural movement and CGI physics that bad since the Garland Spider-Man movies.
The tuk-tuk scene felt like it took forever and a day, and my suspension of disbelief just couldn’t handle it. But then again, people genuinely pay to watch the Fast & Furious movies and actively enjoy them, so I guess that scene was for that crowd.
The big conclusion of the action portion of the movie felt like it was all done in green screen. Something just felt off about it all. It was a scene that could have probably been done on location too. If it WAS on location then what ever they did to it in post needs to be re-assessed.
Token snakes, token bugs. Both forced and added nothing the way they did when first used in the original movies. They don’t need to be in EVERY movie.
They close out with a nod to the original movie, but it was built up so badly it just felt like empty platitudes than a big moment.
Overall this movie was MUCH better than Crystal Skull, but doesn’t hold a candle to the original trilogy. It does actually have the feel of an Indy movie for most of it, which is a good thing. Like Crystal Skull though, it shouldn’t have been made either. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago sure, but not now.
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.
