Genre: Science Fiction
Premise: A biologist and her team travel into a mysterious cancerous-like bubble in the forest where the laws of biology no longer apply.
About: Celebrated novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland made waves with his first feature film in 2016, Ex Machina. This is his follow-up, which stars Natalie Portman. The film has endured some internal controversy at its embattled studio, Paramount, as they tried to get Garland to recut the film into something more mass-audience friendly, and he declined.
Writer: Alex Garland (based on the book by Jeff VanderMeer)
Details: 115 minutes
Before I get into my Annihilation review, I have to talk about Netflix. Because I tried to watch Mute, Duncan Jones’ laughably awful excuse for a film, and thought… Netflix is in serious trouble.
Blockbuster Video never anticipated its demise. And if Netflix continues on this track, where whenever anyone hears, “A Netflix Production,” they immediately associate it with trash, they too will be wondering how they went from global leader to asset-selling bleeder. Are you crazy, Carson? Predicting the demise of Netflix? They’re the biggest thing in entertainment right now. Yeah well the brand is only as good as the product. And Netflix seems to be on a mission to make some of the worst movies ever.
Netflix makes money on three fronts – the media they license, the media they buy, and the media they produce. As the streaming market matures and the studios realize that a quick money infusion from renting their movies to Netflix is harmful to their long-term sustainability, they will start pulling those licenses away. Netflix is already anticipating this, which is why they’re putting so much money into buying and making their own content. The problem is that they have no idea how to develop movies. So what they’re doing is telling any filmmaker who will take their call, “Here’s a chunk of money. Come make your movie with us.”
The problem with this plan is that they’re getting all of these filmmakers’ passion projects – the junk that everyone else in Hollywood rejected. As a result, we get movies like Mute, one of the worst scripts I’ve ever read and now… one of the worst movies ever made – a cheap Blade Runner ripoff with the most boring main character you’ll ever come across. I didn’t make it that far in the film. Maybe 30 minutes? Because I was at the point where I’d rather be shaving my skin off with a potato peeler than continue watching.
Netflix has to be careful. Of the 50 movies they’ve made so far, they’re batting around 3%. They need to get some people in there who actually know how to develop material. They need some people who know how to say no. They need people who understand the movie business. Because all they’ve shown that they can do at this point? Is throw money around. That’s the only reason they’re getting all this press. Is because they’re really good at throwing around money. And I don’t know about you? But I’m pretty sure that if you gave me money to throw around, I’d be good at it too.
Anyway…..!
On the flip side of all this, I want to talk about the future of science-fiction. Because there is a filmmaker out there who, if he wants to be, can be the next big thing in sci-fi.
With Annihilation, Alex Garland has promoted himself from intriguing curiosity to the most interesting up-and-coming science-fiction voice in the industry.
I mean, WHOA. I walked out of this movie stunned. It’s such a unique film that I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like Aliens by way of 2001 set in the Deep South. Just by that description alone, you get a sense of how original this movie is.
The story follows Lena, a biologist whose husband, Kane, a marine, comes back from a mysterious mission unannounced. The military shows up soon-after, taking Kane and questioning Lena, asking her what Kane told her about his mission.
The next thing you know, Lena is being flown to a remote state park in the deep south and shown “The Shimmer,” a slowly expanding virus that’s altering the biology of everything inside of it. If it keeps expanding like this, it could take over cities, states. Everyone who’s gone into it hasn’t come out… except for Kane.
Lena is asked to join the next mission into the Shimmer with four other women. And it’s as weird and unpredictable as advertised, with gaps of missing time, an earth that seems to be intelligent as it grows plants that look like people, and, of course, giant freaking animal hybrids. As her teammates die, one by one, Lena is determined to get to the center of the Shimmer and find out what it wants.
To understand the extent of this film’s originality, you need to see the ending. It’s one of the trippiest things I’ve ever witnessed in a theater. In it, Lena encounters the heart of the Shimmer and coaxes out a sort of tin clone of herself. This clone is “born” and quickly becomes infatuated with Lena, mirroring and mimicking her, not letting her escape.
The two engage in this weird mirror-dance, and while that may sound stupid, the way it’s choreographed and the way this pounding beautiful score accompanies it, it’s like you’ve been transported into another dimension to see the alternate version of the film’s finale. I absolutely loved it.
The rest of the movie isn’t as crazy, but has weird touches like that all around. And when I got home, I had to know how Garland wrote this thing, as it was so different from anything I was accustomed to.
It turns out he used two methods – a funky adaptation approach and theme.
So the first thing he did was he read the book, sat on it, and when it came time to adapt it, instead of rereading the book and plotting out the movie like most writers do, he decided to adapt it from memory. His argument was that the novel itself played out like a dream. So he should adapt it like a dream. Therefore, all of the big memorable moments from the book are in the film. But the stuff he didn’t remember, he just made up along the way. That’s a big reason why the movie feels so different.
Also, Garland focused heavily on theme, specifically self-destruction. When you write from theme, the plot points aren’t as sharp and the story doesn’t feel as written. There’s more of a stream-of-consciousness to the proceedings and when you combine that with the dream approach, you can imagine how off-kilter everything’s going to feel.
In a medium where structure is king, what Garland did was brave. It’s what every artist wants to do – let go and just “write.” But we all back off from it because it’s too scary. The story becomes too unfocused. To see him commit to that all the way through is admirable. And when Paramount’s new head David Ellison tried to get him to change it, Garland stood strong and said no. He believed in that direction. And he was right, from an artistic standpoint.
With that said, Alex Garland has been writing for 20+ years. He’s written so many structured screenplays that even when he’s not trying to structure, he’s still structuring. I mean we have a clear goal in this movie at all times. They’re trying to get to a certain point on the map. So it’s not like all logic is thrown out the window and there’s no point to the proceedings.
This is important to note for any new writers who attempt this approach. When you’ve never structured before and you try to do what Garland did, it’s HIGHLY LIKELY it’s going to end in disaster. And I can say that because I’m the one who reads all those disasters. Learn how to do it right first. THEN you can play around.
I want Garland to direct a huge sci-fi movie next. The problem is, I don’t know if he will! Going off his interviews, he seems to detest directing, stating that he will never get involved in a franchise because after three years of working on something, he’s sick of it. But to me, Garland has surpassed Villeneuve as THE best up-and-coming sci-fi director in the biz. If there’s a knock on Annihilation, it’s that it feels small. And the reason for that is obvious. They didn’t have a lot of money. I want to see what happens when Alex Garland gets a lot of money.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Weirdness is susceptible to the law of diminishing returns. One of the things Garland talked about in interviews was that he wanted this to be weird, but he knew that every scene couldn’t be some sci-fi version of a Big Lebowski acid trip dream sequence because weirdness is susceptible to the law of diminishing returns. And he’s right. If you keep throwing a bunch of crazy weird shit into your script, sooner or later the reader gets used to it. So by the end of the film, nothing you can show them will shock them anymore. So you have to be deliberate and careful about the way you unravel weirdness. It has to be a little bit more each time.
