Annihilation is a classic in the making

There are times when the short-sightedness of studio executives turns out to be a blessing in disguise. So let’s hear it for the Paramount executive who, allegedly on the basis of one dodgy test screening, decided that Annihilation was too smart for the audience. He wanted changes and he wanted the lead character, played by Natalie Portman, to be made more sympathetic and audience-friendly.

Generally the studio’s will is done but in this case it came up against the producer of the movie, Scott Rudin, the closest thing the industry has to an immovable object. Rudin had final cut and he defended his director, Alex Garland, and said there would be no changes. The final outcome was that Paramount snuck the film out in the US and retains rights to China, whereas Rudin sold the rights for the rest of the world to Netflix.

The result is that one of the most interesting and fascinating studio films of recent years can find an audience much larger, and potentially more receptive, than it would have done even with a major cinema release. This film will divide audiences – I like it very much but I know others who don’t care for it – but I honestly believe this is a cult classic in the making.

Garland, who did the utterly compelling Ex Machina (2014), has drawn influences from as far afield as Russian cinema and American comic books for a film which demands your attention from first to last.

To some extent he returns to the themes of Ex Machina in a film which basically asks serious questions about the nature of existence and what it takes to be human. The questions are asked in the shape of Lena (Natalie Portman), a doctor whose soldier husband (Oscar Isaac) has been missing for a year on a secret mission. One night he turns up with no explanation for his disappearance except that he is taken suddenly and dangerously ill.

As he is rushed to hospital his ambulance is hijacked by a mysterious military convoy. They are both taken to an isolated research facility in Florida called Southern Reach, near the site of a meteor strike three years previously which has created a slowly-expanding zone around its epicentre. Visually this looks like the rainbow-slicked surface of a soap bubble, hence the nickname The Shimmer.

Lots of things have gone into The Shimmer but nothing, with the exception of Isaac, has come out. Dr Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is about to lead another team beyond the barrier and invites Lena, a former soldier herself, to join them. This five-woman squad ventures into the unknown and finds everything irrevocably changed. The rules of nature don’t apply inside The Shimmer, some things bloom, others are corrupted and strange things happen to animals, plants, and, especially, people.  

At this point the film starts to resemble Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort (1981) crossed with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972). This lost patrol consider themselves, as we’re told by one of their number, ‘damaged goods’ and the story unfolds in an increasingly pervasive air of paranoia. The altered reality inside The Shimmer means that they, and we, have no frame of reference. We don’t know what’s good and what’s bad we only suspect it will not end well.

Apart from his Ex Machina star Isaac, Garland is also reunited with cinematographer Rob Hardy and production designer, Mark Rigby. Hardy sets the mood with a colour palette which looks fetid and borderline toxic, the purples and pinks of The Shimmer stand out in sharp contrast to the swamp tones of the rest of the film. His use of framing to separate the characters in the shot means that even when they are together they appear isolated; the sinuous, elegant camera movements keeps the audience permanently unsettled.

Rigby’s production design is a tour de force. Large parts of it appear to be inspired by John Totleben’s artwork for Alan Moore’s version of Swamp Thing from DC Comics in the early 80s. Everything seems organic, the set seems to grow like a persistent mould as the film unfolds.

If I’m honest, despite its ambition, Annihilation doesn’t always work. The narrative is a little clunky in places and the flashback on flashback structure can be unnecessarily complex. Some of the CGI beats look a little ropey at times too, but the malignant mood of the movie is spot on.

I liked it a lot but I am happy to concede there will be as many opinions as there are people who see it. Annihilation bears repeat viewing and the beauty of Netflix is that you can easily do that. I am confident this is a film with a long tail which is destined for cult status.

One thing puzzles me though. Even if the film is a dud, which I don’t think it is, Paramount’s decision is utterly baffling. In the current climate in Hollywood they should surely have celebrated the fact that they had a sci-fi action thriller with a mostly all-female cast. They might have taken a hit at the box office but they would surely have been the beneficiaries of some serious virtue signalling.