3. Annihilation

Annihilation

Director: Alex Garland (Ex Machina)

Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson

Annihilation is a mind-blowing trip into an inscrutable heart of darkness that marks writer-director Alex Garland as one of the genre’s true greats. Desperate to understand what happened to her soldier husband (Oscar Isaac) on his last mission, a biologist (Natalie Portman) ventures alongside four comrades (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, and Tuva Novotny) into a mysterious, and rapidly growing, hot zone known as the “Shimmer.

This film is an unapologetically radical adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's hit book. Both visually and intellectually, it was nothing less than a psychedelic horror movie about aliens, communication, and people's capacity for self-destruction. It was also an environmental allegory in a way few films dared to approach, an unsettling and hallucinatory tale of destruction and transformation, division and replication—dynamics that Garland posits as the fundamental building blocks of every aspect of existence, and which fully come to the fore during a climax of such surreal birth-death insanity that it has to be seen to be believed. The film combines elements of numerous predecessors (Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Thing) to create something wholly and frighteningly unique, it dares to dream in a language we can't quite comprehend.

It is also an environmental allegory in a way few films dared to approach, an unsettling and hallucinatory tale of destruction and transformation, division and replication—dynamics that Garland posits as the fundamental building blocks of every aspect of existence, and which fully come to the fore during a climax of such surreal birth-death insanity that it has to be seen to be believed.