Annihilation
Enter the Shimmer
Stay on the edge of your seat
And keep your brain on.
“Annihilation” reminded me a lot of last year’s “mother!” and one of my favorite movies of all time, “Donnie Darko.” In both those films, there’s a lot to unpack. Taken at face value, the storylines are easy to follow, and if you only care for the surface-level thrills those films offer, you’ll have a satisfying movie-watching experience. But if you really try to unpack what’s happening before your eyes, and you let them sit with you, and you ponder them and re-watch them and Google them to see other people’s takes on them, then they can have a profound impact on you. With a movie like “Annihilation,” half the fun of the movie-going experience takes place after the credits roll, when you spend the ride home debating what it was all about with your friends and sift through all the theories online. Without giving much away, “Annihilation” delivers on both the surface-level thrills and the deeper meaning parables. A heady science fiction thriller’s ending is make-or-break, and while Annihilation’s is even weirder than I imagined, it’s thoroughly satisfying. Though I did leave the theater with my brain scrambled and my jaw on the floor.
The real travesty is that “Annihilation” didn’t last three weeks in the theaters near me, and it’s definitely the type of a movie that benefits from being screened for an audience. I really did stay on the edge of my seat throughout the entire two-hour runtime, and while I’m bummed that more people won’t get to have that experience, I’m sure I’ll find solace knowing they’ll be able to stream “Annihilation” from the edge of their couches.