ANNIHILATION from Ex Machina Writer/Director (87% Rotten Tomatoes Score)

If you have seen ANNIHILATION, how would you rate it?


  • Total voters
    97
I just saw this movie last night it was good. It doesn't give you clear cut answers on the bigger question like whether the shimmer is alien based, religious/God creation, or something else. They leave some stuff for you to decide or to simply remain a mystery. Solid 4/5

They clearly state it was an alien
 
I didnt catch that she actually had the tattoo...are you sure about the tattoo part?

what you said does make sense
I am sure Lena and Anya lady had the tattoo. During Lenas interrogation my eyes kept focusing on the tattoo and I was looking for clues to why she had it. Saw it on Anya first though when they went into the shimmer.

At first I thought it had to do to Anya being a sober addict and having an ouroburos tattoo to symbolize that she is recovered. Honestly don't know.
 
I am sure Lena and Anya lady had the tattoo. During Lenas interrogation my eyes kept focusing on the tattoo and I was looking for clues to why she had it. Saw it on Anya first though when they went into the shimmer.

At first I thought it had to do to Anya being a sober addict and having an ouroburos tattoo to symbolize that she is recovered. Honestly don't know.

I remember lena have it and noticed that once in the shimmer that she was scratching there with no tattoo but didnt see it on anyone else. 2nd viewing here i come
 
Lena's tattoo is prominent during early interrogation scenes, one of which followed by a flashback sequence that focuses on the same arm without the tattoo. At the end the film fits this little symbol into Lena's glass of water, the opposite of cell division, where the water on the glass comes together rather than divides. It might just be my eye playing tricks on me, but if true it neatly bookends the cup images at the beginning.

I believe the film is about new beginnings through catalysts of adversarial pressures and fire. Sometimes it takes a fire to reseed a forest. Self destruction that leads to rebirth. Lena was emotionally and intellectually ready for such evolution decides to go with it because she doesn't see annihilation as death so much as change. And besides she's been refracted/recoded, implying that pieces of everything will continue to live on inside the new super organism. Kinda like crossing Noah's Ark with Adam & Eve.

Screambear can go the fuck back to hell.
 
This movie was pretty good. Just goes to show that young people can't sit and enjoy anything without an explosion every 2 minutes. That's why we have the movies we do today.
 
This movie was pretty good. Just goes to show that young people can't sit and enjoy anything without an explosion every 2 minutes. That's why we have the movies we do today.

Garland has won me over with his two directorial efforts. I’ll defunitely be on the lookout for his next one.

Like Villeneueve he’s a technically good filmmaker and also making interesting films.
 
Saw it this afternoon.

Lots of unanswered questions. Will probably go see again.

If you're in to eye candy movies (i.e. marvel superhero movies, etc.) you probably won't like this. Requires attention span and patience.
 
Anyone else have a thing for Gina Rodriguez...

I was digging that JoJo Calderwood haircut too.
 
@Strange King ,

I did see Game Night as well. Pretty hilarious and I liked that all the characters had their time to shine. McAdams really needs to do more comedies. She was great. Bateman consistently solid. Chandler had some spot on funny delivery (I ate at Panera...) and the supporting cast was damn good.

Meth Damon stole the show in my opinion though. Friggin hilarious.
 
I thought the film was fine overall. The person I saw it with was less than impressed and seemed all about nitpicking it, which I guess was a product of the slow pace. I didn't mind it nearly as much, I actually liked those quieter moments-- for the most part. The performances were also pretty good, even if a couple of characters could have used more development. JJL is pretty one note, yes, but it makes sense given what we end up learning more about who she plays.

I did have a couple of issues with it. I didn't really need all those cuts back to Natalie Portman's home life before her husband's return; for how much this film likes to remain ambiguous, it definitely wanted to make sure I knew her marriage to Kane was not a perfect one. I would've appreciated more of that time focused on what was going on inside The Shimmer. There's also weird things that get brought up but are quickly dropped, too, namely the team missing time between them entering The Shimmer and the time they wake up to having already set up camp. I don't expect everything to be explained in a movie like this, I just would have liked more attention on that. It's stuff I can forgive though, for a movie that offers up something original and poses some interesting themes/questions.

And yeah, that fucking scene with the bear is going to haunt my dreams.
 
There's also weird things that get brought up but are quickly dropped, too, namely the team missing time between them entering The Shimmer and the time they wake up to having already set up camp. I don't expect everything to be explained in a movie like this, I just would have liked more attention on that.
What more would you have wanted from the distorted time gimmick? Much more would have added to confusion, which would need to be offset with either more tension, drama, or explanation. As it stands, the missing time explains why teams can't immediately exit the Shimmer.

As for flashing back to Lena's backstory, I felt it was a pretty good dramatization of her reasons for entering, as well as her ultimate decision.
 
What more would you have wanted from the distorted time gimmick? Much more would have added to confusion, which would need to be offset with either more tension, drama, or explanation. As it stands, the missing time explains why teams can't immediately exit the Shimmer.

As for flashing back to Lena's backstory, I felt it was a pretty good dramatization of her reasons for entering, as well as her ultimate decision.

I don't know, I just found it strange that it was one of the first weird things they encounter when they hit The Shimmer and then there's no real mention of it again. Though to be fair, it wasn't until after I posted that, that I remembered the time lapse gets mentioned toward the beginning when Lena's interrogator says she only had two weeks worth of rations but she was in there for four months.

I'll just agree to disagree on the latter part. I feel like the first time we see Lena interact with that coworker we get a good idea of what's going on/had been going on with them. There were little moments of Lena interacting one on one with Ventress and the rest of the team that felt just as revealing to me and I would have liked a bit more of that. Plus I felt like the cutaways to Lena being interrogated were good enough at giving breathers in between time the movie spends in The Shimmer.
 
I don't know, I just found it strange that it was one of the first weird things they encounter when they hit The Shimmer and then there's no real mention of it again. Though to be fair, it wasn't until after I posted that, that I remembered the time lapse gets mentioned toward the beginning when Lena's interrogator says she only had two weeks worth of rations but she was in there for four months.

I'll just agree to disagree on the latter part. I feel like the first time we see Lena interact with that coworker we get a good idea of what's going on/had been going on with them. There were little moments of Lena interacting one on one with Ventress and the rest of the team that felt just as revealing to me and I would have liked a bit more of that. Plus I felt like the cutaways to Lena being interrogated were good enough at giving breathers in between time the movie spends in The Shimmer.

The Interrogation scenes were good, as you said. I kept thinking, who is that dude. Then it hit me- Wong from Doctor Strange! Guy did well- I liked his no nonsense approach to the role.

Portman backstory wasn’t overkill in my opinion. They did want to underscore that her guilt over being unfaithful to Isaac was a motivation for why she was so hell bent on going into The Shimmer. She makes that point that she “owed him.”
 
Benedict Wong has taken over the mantle of Hardest Working Man in Sci-fi (formerly held by Tony Todd). He's in SUNSHINE, too.
 
Sounds like it's an inferior ripoff of Stalker but unlike the George Solaris it's actually work seeing.
 
Saw it last night. And, yeah, the bear was the best part.

I enjoyed Ex Machina a lot more and I believe it was simply because it was a simpler story. This was...hmm, it seems the producers let this writer/director just run with this idea without telling him to "bring it back a tad."

So was the bear blind? How'd they know that?
 
So was the bear blind? How'd they know that?
I don't think it was, despite the nod to the "visual acuity" gimmick from JURASSIC PARK. I hover somewhere between the notion that in a real bear attack one does nothing to provoke the bear, and maybe it'll get bored and leave you alone; and the sci-fi conceit that emotions and mentalities are also being refracted and dispersed alongside genetic mutation/recombination. Reduction of fear emitters, or someshit.
 
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