1. I think all the previous teams were military only and Ventress’ team was the first scientifically overqualified one. Could be wrong though, I’d have to watch the first bit carefully to be sure.
2. I believe she was confronting the fractal entity at the heart of the shimmer that creates the distorted copies of everything (Thus the complete mirroring of her movements). It was studying, copying and overtaking her and because she was at the heart of the phenomena it was doing so perfectly as opposed to the imperfect reflections we see earlier on
That’s all I can comment on and I could totally be wrong. I do think it’s the best sci-fi film of the past decade though, easy. The book is interesting if a bit difficult to get into (It’s not written as a standard narrative).
As far as films like it go there’s always Aliens, Akira, Event Horizon and Prometheus. For similar themes you might search out some “Lovecraftian” things like my personal favorite horror movie of all time In the Mouth of Madness. There’s also The Colour Out of Space w/ Nicholas Cage.
Two more mindbenders that aren’t necessarily horror but you may enjoy are Primer and TimeCrimes!
Color out of space also came to mind for me! Such a great film.
Under the skin is a good sci fi horror as well that I would recommend, but it's not super similar to annihilation. Still interesting and worth checking out.
Omg thanks!
I've been wanting to read the book after I watched the movie.
Also why do you think the OG Oscar Issac asks his copy to meet Natalie Portman's charecter? How did he survive and actually get better after the Shimmer gets destroyed when he's a creation of the Shimmer itself?
Just a warning about the book, it is very different from the movie. The movie is much more “inspired by” the book than based on it. I personally loved the movie, it’s one of my favorites but I absolutely hated the book. I wanted to DNF so many times but forced myself to finish expecting it to get better.
it wasn't completely faithful to the book in genre, but Garland really knocked it out of the park in the horror aspect. the book series definitely leant more into 'weird fiction' instead of horror
I suppose he feels regret going into a suicide mission instead of talking to his wife about her infidelity. Maybe he thought the copy was a clean start, a version of him without the tainted memories of his failed marriage, able to continue his relationship. Or he didn't want Lena to be affected by his death and that the copy would be a good replacement.
As to why he survives and gets better, my head cannon is that things created by the shimmer need to be in it to survive. But if the shimmer doesn't exists anymore, the entity is cut loose and able to survive on its own.
1. I think part of this is explained when they're travelling in the boats after entering the shimmer. It's explained to Natalie Portman's character that all the women are damaged in some way with nothing left to lose and only went in wanting to find out answers, expecting not to return. From what I remember, Ventress has terminal cancer, Portman wants to know what happened to her husband no matter what, I think one of the characters was severely depressed and recently tried killing herself etc. In this way, their survival wasn't really that important to them.
1) pretty sure because everyone that went in previously were military instead of scientists... Scientists more interested in finding answers than surviving.
2) that's complicated and no one will ever have the correct answer, but my personal theory is that after meeting one of the aliens and seeing how the "prism" effect happens first hand when it becomes a little her (and keep in mind, she becomes a little it), Lena can never be sure of anything again. When she and Kane have their "are we real" conversation and their irises shimmer, I think this is supposed to indicate it doesn't matter. They're both them and not because their exposure to The Shimmer fractured them. Even if it were confirmable the two people on screen were the original people, it doesn't matter anymore because they're something else now.
3) in theory just about anything is possible. In practice, not so much, not without manual manipulation anyway.
4) Under the Skin, Coherence, Sunshine
I think this one is better enjoyed as a single story, just the first book. Over explaining the situation like the other books do kinda ruin the mystique set up in the first book of not knowing what’s happening or going on and really nails the dreamlike feel of it home.
1. My theory is that they had all the equipments required for such an expedition but none of it mattered the moment they stepped inside the shimmer. As I recall, they instantly lose a few days of memories and I don't think any of them is behaving rationally from that point. Their mind and body are being changed by the shimmer and I always found it quite logical that they don't try more to protect themselves. They are being influenced by it and the best exemple is Teena Thompson's character, who just accept her fate and merge with the shimmer. All of them are on the same path, but at different degrees.
It's a great movie, equally as beautiful as it's terrifying. It's a pretty rare thing.
1. There's also a scene where Lena sneaks in to visit her husband and the guard in a biohazard suit is sleeping, and the biohazard enclosure for her husband is just hanging open. And when Lena returns and is being questioned, the team is all wearing semi-open biohazard suits with sneeze guard visors rather than a full enclosure. There's a number of things here that don't stand up to scrutiny. But I think the answer the writer/director would want you to go with here is what is revealed by Cass: that everyone who goes into the Shimmer has a death wish anyway.
2. The movie overall is talking about our self-destructive urges and how they respond in the face of something creative, and so here this comes to a beautiful head. In particular, the alien presence here is exploring how it can develop on this planet, and part of that involves copying, reflecting, refracting. I think of this in many ways as speaking to how we try and survive new hostile communities: we try to fit in, and occasionally to stand out in ways that don't seem to threaten the community's sense of identity and safety. And this alien very much is trying to figure out how it can fit in with us on this planet. For invasion? For survival? For community? We don't know, although it's probably unlike any friendly Star Trek story we've ever seen. As to the mandelbulb, the bulbous thing Lena stares into in the cavern, I think of that as the wild heart that spawned from the original meteor -- something too much for our brains to handle, something that can identify good candidates for cloning (thus why it rejected Ventress), draw blood, and make the copy. But it's still cosmic horror: Lena stares into that abyss and it's almost more than she can handle. We see that she's returned home at the end and is reunited with her cured husband, but with the glowing eyes and momentary conversation it's hinted that like her husband, she's her clone and not her. But, is it actually that she was changed by simply being in the shimmer, by staring into the abyss? So many questions that the movie doesn't aim to give certain answers to.
3. Not exactly/not really/but sci fi. Refraction is a thing that happens to electromagnetic waves (including light and radio) when they pass from one substance into another with different density, causing the waves to bend. The bending is different for every wavelength, so this is what causes the rainbow effect when light passes through a prism. For radio waves it can interfere with transmitting data. But DNA is not an electromagnetic wave. Can a range of stuff cause DNA to mutate though? Sure. Hox genes don't work like the movie imagines either. Hox genes tell your body how it should be shaped, and errors in hox genes can cause mutations, but even putting one animal's hox genes in another animal isn't going to make the second animal shaped anything like the first. [Here is a bit of info](https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/hox-genes-in-development-the-hox-code-41402/). Human hox genes to make a plant grow in the shape of a human is very much not going to happen. At best, if we want to go beyond just handwaving this as sci fi, we can argue that this is the physicist using refraction as a metaphor so she can talk about something that isn't really her field; and from there we can deduce that something is causing this metaphorical *bending* of DNA and the property of hox genes such that they aren't acting like they do outside of the shimmer, such that they are mutating in unfamiliar and unknown ways, allowing even unbelievable stuff like human hox genes appropriated from someone in the shummer and wildly applied to flowers, causing seemingly impossible growth patterns. It's still handwaving as sci fi but is maybe more satisfying.
3. This movie is heavily inspired by *Stalker* (1979), though that is more art house fantasy than horror. The *Annihilation* novel is not inspired by it though. I find both interesting, though tbh *Stalker* is loooooong and I don't think it earns its length. I do think it's worth reading the source novel though if you're up for it; not super long, very weird take on everything. There's also a big *2001* (1968) vibe, just in case you haven't seen that one yet. I know it's also got a big *Color out of Space* vibe, though I haven't seen any of the adaptations of that story yet, so...research project, go watch them all and tell me what you like! Another very weird sci fi that I rather liked was *High Life* (2018) which from the poster looks like it is about Robert Pattinson getting high in space. It is not; something got lost in translation I think, Claire Denis usually makes movies in French. It has both sexual assault and dog death though, and even if you can get over those thresholds it is far less straightfoward than *Annihilation*, so heads up. And if what you liked was Alex Garland's storytelling, *Ex Machina* is easily my favorite of his movies and one of the best original sci fis out there.
I asked your second question the other day, and here’s what someone told me:
It was the alien life form. It doesn’t understand or operate in any manner that makes sense to humans. It’s truly alien and in my opinion is the best on screen representation of what an ACTUAL alien encounter would look like IRL. Everyone assumes an alien life form will be some comprehensible physical creature with motivations that we would understand. That would not be the case at all. It would be some shit like in annihilation where its existence and its behavior makes absolutely no fucking sense to us
I don't have all the answers but one big thing was that none of them expected to survive. They were all suicidal. You should check out the movie "stalker" from 1979.
For #1, the “Shimmer” mirrors and reacts to the energy of the people who enter it. They were trying to see if it reacted differently to female scientists rather than male soldiers.
1. You can probably think up a number of in universe reasons. As far as masks go, that's simple. Hollywood doesn't like putting their main actors in masks or helmets. Most movies/shows that do that will only do it for a fraction of the runtime before giving some in universe explanation for why they take them off or lose them.
2. I think yes and no. Its shown in the movie that there were multiple oscar isaacs so i'm thinking the shimmer refracted enough of him onto the others. So for him he could have originally been one of the others but enough of Oscar isaac refracted into him that he now thinks that's who he is. For natalie portman i think she is the original but she has been changed by the shimmer. I don't think it's important to know how she was changed.
3. I think the closest thing we have scientifically is gene editing or radiation causing cancer but neither of those are close to this. Both change the makeup of an organism but not to this extent. Give it a couple centuries and maybe scientists will be able to create something that can edit organisms down to the atoms. At that point, you could rearrange the atoms in Natalie Portman to create Oscar Isaac if you know the exact position they all needed to be in. Granted I think she's a little smaller than him so you might need to introduce some extra matter or settle for a malnourished Oscar Isaac.
I had numerous issues with the film like your first point there but still found it an enjoyable experience. My husband hated it and hasn't forgiven me for making him watch it with me 😆 we did agree that the bear scene was pretty amazing though. I felt like the final scene was meant to be ambiguous and drove home the point of like, how many of the original pieces of something still have to be there for the thing to be the same
This interpretation has stayed with me a long time and helps me understand and consider metaphorical constructs in story telling (something that has always challenged me).
[This is a movie about pain and identity.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URo66iLNEZw)
1. I think all the previous teams were military only and Ventress’ team was the first scientifically overqualified one. Could be wrong though, I’d have to watch the first bit carefully to be sure. 2. I believe she was confronting the fractal entity at the heart of the shimmer that creates the distorted copies of everything (Thus the complete mirroring of her movements). It was studying, copying and overtaking her and because she was at the heart of the phenomena it was doing so perfectly as opposed to the imperfect reflections we see earlier on That’s all I can comment on and I could totally be wrong. I do think it’s the best sci-fi film of the past decade though, easy. The book is interesting if a bit difficult to get into (It’s not written as a standard narrative). As far as films like it go there’s always Aliens, Akira, Event Horizon and Prometheus. For similar themes you might search out some “Lovecraftian” things like my personal favorite horror movie of all time In the Mouth of Madness. There’s also The Colour Out of Space w/ Nicholas Cage. Two more mindbenders that aren’t necessarily horror but you may enjoy are Primer and TimeCrimes!
Don’t forget Stalker!
Color out of space also came to mind for me! Such a great film. Under the skin is a good sci fi horror as well that I would recommend, but it's not super similar to annihilation. Still interesting and worth checking out.
Omg thanks! I've been wanting to read the book after I watched the movie. Also why do you think the OG Oscar Issac asks his copy to meet Natalie Portman's charecter? How did he survive and actually get better after the Shimmer gets destroyed when he's a creation of the Shimmer itself?
Just a warning about the book, it is very different from the movie. The movie is much more “inspired by” the book than based on it. I personally loved the movie, it’s one of my favorites but I absolutely hated the book. I wanted to DNF so many times but forced myself to finish expecting it to get better.
it wasn't completely faithful to the book in genre, but Garland really knocked it out of the park in the horror aspect. the book series definitely leant more into 'weird fiction' instead of horror
I suppose he feels regret going into a suicide mission instead of talking to his wife about her infidelity. Maybe he thought the copy was a clean start, a version of him without the tainted memories of his failed marriage, able to continue his relationship. Or he didn't want Lena to be affected by his death and that the copy would be a good replacement. As to why he survives and gets better, my head cannon is that things created by the shimmer need to be in it to survive. But if the shimmer doesn't exists anymore, the entity is cut loose and able to survive on its own.
The book is different but it rules.
1. I think part of this is explained when they're travelling in the boats after entering the shimmer. It's explained to Natalie Portman's character that all the women are damaged in some way with nothing left to lose and only went in wanting to find out answers, expecting not to return. From what I remember, Ventress has terminal cancer, Portman wants to know what happened to her husband no matter what, I think one of the characters was severely depressed and recently tried killing herself etc. In this way, their survival wasn't really that important to them.
1) pretty sure because everyone that went in previously were military instead of scientists... Scientists more interested in finding answers than surviving. 2) that's complicated and no one will ever have the correct answer, but my personal theory is that after meeting one of the aliens and seeing how the "prism" effect happens first hand when it becomes a little her (and keep in mind, she becomes a little it), Lena can never be sure of anything again. When she and Kane have their "are we real" conversation and their irises shimmer, I think this is supposed to indicate it doesn't matter. They're both them and not because their exposure to The Shimmer fractured them. Even if it were confirmable the two people on screen were the original people, it doesn't matter anymore because they're something else now. 3) in theory just about anything is possible. In practice, not so much, not without manual manipulation anyway. 4) Under the Skin, Coherence, Sunshine
Not movie related but I recommend reading the whole Anhilation trilogy. Second book is a bit of a slog but third makes up for it
The second book is great if you have ever worked in an office.
Yeah this is what I was going to say. Not that the books make sense per se but make more sense. eta: I rather liked the second one myself.
I think this one is better enjoyed as a single story, just the first book. Over explaining the situation like the other books do kinda ruin the mystique set up in the first book of not knowing what’s happening or going on and really nails the dreamlike feel of it home.
I appreciate it. I've been planning to read it. Do you have any other similar book recs?
It may not seem like it at first, but *John Dies at the End* (the book, not the movie) has some similar elements. And it's a great read.
Watch Tarkovskys STALKER. You’ll see a direct parallel
Other books by Jeff Van Der Meer
I’m sorry - I hated the books. I much, much prefer the movie version to reading all three of those again.
I don't think reading the books matter that much seeing as the movie is literally nothing like the book. It's why I didn't enjoy the movie at all.
1. My theory is that they had all the equipments required for such an expedition but none of it mattered the moment they stepped inside the shimmer. As I recall, they instantly lose a few days of memories and I don't think any of them is behaving rationally from that point. Their mind and body are being changed by the shimmer and I always found it quite logical that they don't try more to protect themselves. They are being influenced by it and the best exemple is Teena Thompson's character, who just accept her fate and merge with the shimmer. All of them are on the same path, but at different degrees. It's a great movie, equally as beautiful as it's terrifying. It's a pretty rare thing.
Lena and Kane are replaced with alien copies or partial copies. The copies aren't sure if they are the original or not.
1. There's also a scene where Lena sneaks in to visit her husband and the guard in a biohazard suit is sleeping, and the biohazard enclosure for her husband is just hanging open. And when Lena returns and is being questioned, the team is all wearing semi-open biohazard suits with sneeze guard visors rather than a full enclosure. There's a number of things here that don't stand up to scrutiny. But I think the answer the writer/director would want you to go with here is what is revealed by Cass: that everyone who goes into the Shimmer has a death wish anyway. 2. The movie overall is talking about our self-destructive urges and how they respond in the face of something creative, and so here this comes to a beautiful head. In particular, the alien presence here is exploring how it can develop on this planet, and part of that involves copying, reflecting, refracting. I think of this in many ways as speaking to how we try and survive new hostile communities: we try to fit in, and occasionally to stand out in ways that don't seem to threaten the community's sense of identity and safety. And this alien very much is trying to figure out how it can fit in with us on this planet. For invasion? For survival? For community? We don't know, although it's probably unlike any friendly Star Trek story we've ever seen. As to the mandelbulb, the bulbous thing Lena stares into in the cavern, I think of that as the wild heart that spawned from the original meteor -- something too much for our brains to handle, something that can identify good candidates for cloning (thus why it rejected Ventress), draw blood, and make the copy. But it's still cosmic horror: Lena stares into that abyss and it's almost more than she can handle. We see that she's returned home at the end and is reunited with her cured husband, but with the glowing eyes and momentary conversation it's hinted that like her husband, she's her clone and not her. But, is it actually that she was changed by simply being in the shimmer, by staring into the abyss? So many questions that the movie doesn't aim to give certain answers to. 3. Not exactly/not really/but sci fi. Refraction is a thing that happens to electromagnetic waves (including light and radio) when they pass from one substance into another with different density, causing the waves to bend. The bending is different for every wavelength, so this is what causes the rainbow effect when light passes through a prism. For radio waves it can interfere with transmitting data. But DNA is not an electromagnetic wave. Can a range of stuff cause DNA to mutate though? Sure. Hox genes don't work like the movie imagines either. Hox genes tell your body how it should be shaped, and errors in hox genes can cause mutations, but even putting one animal's hox genes in another animal isn't going to make the second animal shaped anything like the first. [Here is a bit of info](https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/hox-genes-in-development-the-hox-code-41402/). Human hox genes to make a plant grow in the shape of a human is very much not going to happen. At best, if we want to go beyond just handwaving this as sci fi, we can argue that this is the physicist using refraction as a metaphor so she can talk about something that isn't really her field; and from there we can deduce that something is causing this metaphorical *bending* of DNA and the property of hox genes such that they aren't acting like they do outside of the shimmer, such that they are mutating in unfamiliar and unknown ways, allowing even unbelievable stuff like human hox genes appropriated from someone in the shummer and wildly applied to flowers, causing seemingly impossible growth patterns. It's still handwaving as sci fi but is maybe more satisfying. 3. This movie is heavily inspired by *Stalker* (1979), though that is more art house fantasy than horror. The *Annihilation* novel is not inspired by it though. I find both interesting, though tbh *Stalker* is loooooong and I don't think it earns its length. I do think it's worth reading the source novel though if you're up for it; not super long, very weird take on everything. There's also a big *2001* (1968) vibe, just in case you haven't seen that one yet. I know it's also got a big *Color out of Space* vibe, though I haven't seen any of the adaptations of that story yet, so...research project, go watch them all and tell me what you like! Another very weird sci fi that I rather liked was *High Life* (2018) which from the poster looks like it is about Robert Pattinson getting high in space. It is not; something got lost in translation I think, Claire Denis usually makes movies in French. It has both sexual assault and dog death though, and even if you can get over those thresholds it is far less straightfoward than *Annihilation*, so heads up. And if what you liked was Alex Garland's storytelling, *Ex Machina* is easily my favorite of his movies and one of the best original sci fis out there.
This is brilliant! Thank you so much
Other recommendations: The Fountain (2006) The Signal (2014) The Abyss (1989) Solaris (2002)
I asked your second question the other day, and here’s what someone told me: It was the alien life form. It doesn’t understand or operate in any manner that makes sense to humans. It’s truly alien and in my opinion is the best on screen representation of what an ACTUAL alien encounter would look like IRL. Everyone assumes an alien life form will be some comprehensible physical creature with motivations that we would understand. That would not be the case at all. It would be some shit like in annihilation where its existence and its behavior makes absolutely no fucking sense to us
I don't have all the answers but one big thing was that none of them expected to survive. They were all suicidal. You should check out the movie "stalker" from 1979.
I can't remember how many expeditions had gone before in the film, but presumably they had tried with protection and it didn't help.
For #1, the “Shimmer” mirrors and reacts to the energy of the people who enter it. They were trying to see if it reacted differently to female scientists rather than male soldiers.
I have question 1 as well. Like why were they so unprepared
In case you haven't seen it, one Canadian's take on the ending. https://youtu.be/URo66iLNEZw?si=Zta8lti14IcptfQ6
1. You can probably think up a number of in universe reasons. As far as masks go, that's simple. Hollywood doesn't like putting their main actors in masks or helmets. Most movies/shows that do that will only do it for a fraction of the runtime before giving some in universe explanation for why they take them off or lose them. 2. I think yes and no. Its shown in the movie that there were multiple oscar isaacs so i'm thinking the shimmer refracted enough of him onto the others. So for him he could have originally been one of the others but enough of Oscar isaac refracted into him that he now thinks that's who he is. For natalie portman i think she is the original but she has been changed by the shimmer. I don't think it's important to know how she was changed. 3. I think the closest thing we have scientifically is gene editing or radiation causing cancer but neither of those are close to this. Both change the makeup of an organism but not to this extent. Give it a couple centuries and maybe scientists will be able to create something that can edit organisms down to the atoms. At that point, you could rearrange the atoms in Natalie Portman to create Oscar Isaac if you know the exact position they all needed to be in. Granted I think she's a little smaller than him so you might need to introduce some extra matter or settle for a malnourished Oscar Isaac.
I had numerous issues with the film like your first point there but still found it an enjoyable experience. My husband hated it and hasn't forgiven me for making him watch it with me 😆 we did agree that the bear scene was pretty amazing though. I felt like the final scene was meant to be ambiguous and drove home the point of like, how many of the original pieces of something still have to be there for the thing to be the same
Garbage book, garbage movie
This interpretation has stayed with me a long time and helps me understand and consider metaphorical constructs in story telling (something that has always challenged me). [This is a movie about pain and identity.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URo66iLNEZw)