Does it still shimmer? The A.V. Club revisits Annihilation

Alex Garland’s Civil War may be the movie of the month, but before Kirsten Dunst or Cailee Spaeny ever picked up their cameras to document a crumbling, divided America, Natalie Portman’s Lena set out with a team of three other scientists to explore an equally terrifying phenomenon called The Shimmer in the director’s landmark sci-fi thriller, Annihilation. The chilling 2018 film about a cancerous invasion of the Earth is the type that latches onto your brain and never really lets go—so much so that our staff still had a whole lot to say about it all these years later.

How does the film compare to Civil War and is that ending still as shocking as it was in theaters? Read on for The A.V. Club’s full breakdown.

Can you recall your experience of watching Annihilation for the first time? What were some of your thoughts back then?

Josh Jackson: I’d read the novel by Jeff VanderMeer and had actually run into him at a book festival while the movie was being made. The book is the best kind of insane, but he told me the movie was going to be even weirder, which was hard to believe. I saw it at a pre-release public screening with people who’d won tickets. It was clear the audience had no idea what they were getting into. I loved seeing Vandermeer’s love of the natural world and sci-fi imagination filtered through Alex Garland’s own vision on the big screen. And I loved hearing my fellow audience members WTF comments as they looked shell-shocked leaving the theater.

Drew Gillis: I do distinctly remember the first time I watched Annihilation—it wasn’t exactly my peak. I had left my parents’ house in Maine to go back to my college dorm early because I was bored. I was alone in my dorm and bored again, so I got lightly stoned and watched the movie on my laptop in bed. It was a pretty terrifying experience overall, both because Annihilation is fairly disturbing and because I was veering toward general paranoia. But when I wasn’t getting up to confirm that my door was locked, I was totally hooked. I remember being so taken by the scene when Tessa Thompson’s Josie makes the decision to give into the shimmer and turns into a plant in the shape of a person. It was so grim—this character had been worn down to the point of accepting death—but was also such a beautiful image.

Matt Schimkowitz: I didn’t read VanderMeer’s novel but had long been a fan of Garland. I read The Beach in college, enjoyed Garland’s work with Danny Boyle, particularly Sunshine, and was really impressed by Ex Machina. I was excited about whatever this was going to be, so my wife and I went to see it at our local AMC as a late Valentine’s Day date. We both left traumatized. The actual experience, I would describe as harrowing. At least Ex Machina had a couple of dances and a charismatic Oscar Isaac to break up the dread. Annihilation offered no such oasis. Over the course of the film, I remember a sinking feeling in my stomach and scratching at my bones. The movie tapped into something deep-seated body horrors about myself. When the mutant bear roared Cassie’s scream, I wanted to crawl out of my skin. However, I was also taken by its themes of loss and guilt, how living organisms subsume different aspects of the world around them, and how that can be our demise.

Mary Kate Carr: I was coming off of a big Natalie Portman moment after Jackie and enjoyed Ex Machina so I went by myself to see Annihilation. I remember it was the same weekend as a big winter storm on the East Coast; my parents lost power and my mom texted me worried something had happened because I didn’t answer my phone while I was in the theater. The thing that had happened was I was getting my mind blown! I thought the cast (especially Portman) was amazing, the visuals were stunning, and the story rich and thoughtful. It leans a shade more toward horror than I usually go for, but I’m so glad I didn’t let that stop me from seeing it, because it became one of my favorites. And that score, oh my God, I think about it all the time. There are so many slices of that movie that really stick with you. (I picked up VanderMeer’s series after seeing the movie, and I’m so glad I did; they’re entirely different, and in this case I preferred the experience of going into the movie with no expectations. But the books are haunting in a totally different way.)

Saloni Gajjar: A favorite activity of mine is to go on solo movie dates. I’m sorry to my loved ones, but sometimes it’s a little bit too much fun to not be disturbed while watching something on the big screen. Annihilation was a wild choice for this, but I didn’t know what I was getting into now, did I? I don’t know if MK will agree considering she watched it alone too but it’s possibly one of my favorite theater experiences ever. It takes you on such a visceral journey. Psychological horror, sci-fi, and aliens while also being a beautiful meditation on coping with grief and trying to survive. Yeah, it’s a lot, especially if you haven’t read the book (I have not). But the result is impeccable and impeccably moving. I love how Garland weaves Lena’s self-destructive tendencies with what The Shimmer’s presence is supposed to indicate to the world. I remember thinking about Annihilation non-stop once I got home, and couldn’t stop telling my friends about this strange, creepy masterpiece.

Emma Keates: I tend to have a pretty high tolerance for horror imagery, so when a film manages to break through and get under my skin it automatically earns a place in my list of all time greats. And man did Annihilation get under my skin the first time I watched it—in a way that felt actually literal. I was as distraught by the bear and the alligator as everyone else, but what really fucked me up was the one-two punch about halfway through of that horrifying man-turned-fungus tableau followed by the revelation that, while alive, the dude’s guts were squirming around inside of him like a boa constrictor. I didn’t feel totally right (or sleep all that well) for weeks after that. But I still developed a bit of an unhealthy fixation with Garland’s work for making me feel that way, which strikes me as an exceptionally appropriate response to this film in particular. At some point, we’re all drawn to seek out that which will eventually destroy us.

Cindy White: It’s so interesting, Matt, that you say Annihilation had no charismatic Oscar Isaac to “break up the dread,” because that’s just it, isn’t it? As soon as he shows up at the house after being MIA for a year, you can tell right away that something is very off. Isaac has this way of dimming the light inside him, so the difference between the Kane that we see in flashbacks and the Kane that comes back is so striking. It sets up everything that follows.

Anyway, I hadn’t read the book before seeing the movie, but my husband had, and we went to see it together. He’d read the entire Southern Reach trilogy, and warned me that I was in for a weird and disturbing time at the movies. Still, I was in no way prepared for what I saw. The ending is bonkers, but all the anomalies and body horror that come before it put you in a state of uneasiness on an almost subconscious level. So by the time you get to the climax you’re braced for something freaky to happen. And it does not disappoint. What stuck with me was Lena’s quote about the Shimmer and how it wasn’t destroying things, it was just changing them and making something new. Like, these new genetic configurations are only unnatural abominations according to our human point of view. I couldn’t stop thinking about that.

Try your best to put words to that bonkers final scene. How did it make you feel?

DG: Confused, quite plainly. More than the visual, it was the score that resonated with me the first time I watched it; that warbly, moody drone really stuck with me, and given the amount of use it’s gotten in memes, I don’t think I’m the only one. But I think I came to eventually square my impression of the ending with my understanding of the film overall. I think the idea of Annihilation is: what if the earth got cancer? I think Natalie Portman’s Lena experiences mitosis and returns to the world as the cancer cell-version of herself. That’s some terrifying stuff?

Jacob Oller: Give me a suicidal H.R. Giger ballet any day of the week. The uncanny movements combined with how organic everything feels creates such striking nature-based horror. The cancer observation is spot-on, because it’s this terrible and seemingly inevitable process that comes from within. It’s self-destructive entropy. That’s what I walked away with, that feeling of familiarity that the best sci-fi can inspire.

MS: So after the bear scene, I had one of those movie moments where I thought, “Maybe I should just leave because this is really freaking me out.” Then, the ending begins, and Lena squares off against her mirror self, slowly approximating her “self” and attempting to destroy the original. I remember it being such a disquieting experience, one that the film was creating whole cloth. There is something energizing in that. Art helps us process those micro emotions that live between words. It expresses that which we cannot. The ending of Annihilation attached itself to our own struggles of self, the person we hope to be for other people, and the person we are for ourselves. The sounds and images were so otherworldly, so difficult to articulate. I was horrified but also couldn’t exactly explain what was scaring me. It’s a rare experience that I still haven’t been excited to relive.

MKC: The movie is such a masterclass in building dread up to that moment, I remember the atmosphere feeling actually oppressive—like, when she’s crushed up against the door, it was like I could really feel that. I loved all the critical work I read later about the choreography and representations of grief and depression, but I don’t think that was anywhere near the forefront of my mind on first viewing. It culminates to this perfectly ambiguous ending that makes you think about the ways our experiences change us on a fundamental level. That sounds like such a vague, broad topic, but when Garland does it, it feels really profound!

SG: Okay, my strongest memory of the last 30 minutes is that when the credits rolled, everyone—and I do mean everyone—in my theater stayed seated. No one moved because it was so clear people were processing what the fuck we just saw. As soon as Lena reaches the lighthouse, I knew shit was about to get weird. Then there’s heartbreak with Kane’s video, disillusion with what Ventress says, and then, of course, her “mirror” shows up. Once we realize the creature is mimicking, learning, and growing from Lena, the puzzle pieces start to fit. When I think of their “fight,” so to speak, it feels like the most jarringly choreographed dance sequence. It’s so suspenseful yet so stunning to look at. I also agree with what Drew said about the score, it’s too damn haunting. It sucks you into the scene and doesn’t let go. Similarly, everything Natalie Portman does here with her expressions and movements is extraordinary.

EK: I actually just rewatched the film for the first time a few weeks ago, and I was really struck by just how ill the barren interior of the lighthouse made me feel this time around. After spending nearly two hours immersed in so much light and color, the bleak whiteness of that space kicked off a sort of evolutionary, self-protective instinct in my body, as if I were physically facing down something poisonous or radioactive. Oddly, I felt almost relieved and even a little sympathetic when the mirror finally made its debut. At least in that space of pure death, it (she?) was something close to alive. Also, as everyone’s already said, that score really sticks with you. It’s been echoing in my head the entire time I’ve been writing these answers, and I kind of want to shut my computer down and curl up into a little ball at this point, if I’m being honest.

CW: Like I said, the entire movie builds up to and prepares you for that ending. I think it goes one step beyond the idea of the Earth getting cancer (that’s a great way to put it) and proposes that the cancer itself isn’t good or evil, it’s merely an agent of change. It’s one organism’s design versus another, and who’s to say which is the proper configuration? Did I walk out of the theater that first time with this interpretation fully formed in my head? Of course not. I was too busy thinking about Jennifer Jason Leigh’s last few unhinged moments, that creepy mirror ballet, and the glint in Lena’s eyes as she embraces the man who isn’t her husband (but even he’s not sure).

Would you have gone into The Shimmer by choice? If so, how do you think you would have fared?

DG: I would not have voluntarily gone into the shimmer.

JO: Hell no.

MS: No. If I were in the shimmer, I would immediately be absorbed by a house and turned into a Matt-shaped topiary.

MKC: No and absolutely not. I am way too chickenshit to want to go on an experimental expedition of any kind. The best way to go is obviously the Tessa Thompson route of gentle acceptance. If I had to be there I would just lay down in the grass and hope, as Matt said, to be absorbed.

SG: I’d like to think I would, but we’re all being real here, so probably not because I’d probably be the first to die. My survival skills are zero.

EK: I always wondered why every party had to get all the way to the lighthouse if everyone just kept on dying. Why not send in a few hour-long expeditions where everyone was attached to the outside world by a rope or something just in case? I’m no scientist, but from a research perspective, wouldn’t it be better to have living testimony anyway? If I could go on one of those little bitty trips, I honestly think it would be pretty cool to walk straight into a fantasy world and live to tell the tale. But as the procedure stands in the actual movie, no way in hell.

CW: It depends. Is my husband somewhere in there? Or maybe the answer to the question of why he came out of it as some haunted version of himself? In that case I probably would. And I’d probably be another pretty garden sculpture after a few days, too.

Have your opinions on the film changed at all, especially in light of Garland’s less loved recent work?

DG: I do think Annihilation is Garland’s strongest work to date—I admitted haven’t seen Men, but based on how people talk about it, I don’t think it would be giving much competition to Annihilation or Ex-Machina. I still think it looks beautiful, and the terrifying parts aren’t any less terrifying after multiple watches—the mutant bear that kind of screams like a human is one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in any movie.

JO: I should rewatch it, because my feelings towards Ex Machina have only warmed over the years. Compared to that relatively bottled movie, Annihilation offered a more expansive atmosphere (Men fits between the two as it fleshes out its small village) and even bigger Choices to chew on. Men is a nasty little feat that’s playing around with being even more narratively opaque, but it does feel a bit like a one-trick pony. And Civil War…

MS: For as much as I enjoyed Annihilation, it’s not one I’ve ever pined to revisit and have only done so once since the film’s initial release. The viewing experience was really emotionally draining, and that bear really screwed me up. As for Devs and Men, I never ended up seeing them. Devs kind of came and went without much fanfare, but the reviews of Men were so dismal that the movie became one I never got around to. I do plan on watching someday but at this point it is homework.

MKC: I’ve only ever seen Ex Machina (and Never Let Me Go, in terms of his work as a screenwriter), but I think in addition to Annihilation those stories prove that Garland is masterful at making large-scale stories feel small-scale, immediate, and personal. As massive as the Shimmer is, the story of Annihilation is really contained within this small group of women and their unique struggles. I don’t think any negative critical reception of his work would turn me against Garland fully, because he’s proven himself a really capable storyteller. Civil War feels like a step too far for me (I just don’t think I want that kind of overwhelming experience in a movie theater, personally), but I think his sci-fi work is the best kind, where you really feel the humanity at the heart of it.

SG: MK puts it best (what’s new?) when she says Garland is quite an expert at taking big themes and making them feel intimate and wild. I rewatched it again for this roundtable and it reinforced my belief that, for me, Annihilation isn’t just his best work to date, it’s one of my favorite films of all time. (No one cares but only recently did I move it from my top 4 films on Letterboxd). I love Ex Machina and I feel like Sunshine is underrated. I’m curious to see what script he’s got in store for us with 28 Years Later. Men was absurd and unforgettable in its own way, but it doesn’t match up anywhere to Annihilation.

EK: The short answer is no. Actually, I think it’s almost the opposite. I’ve long been a card-carrying Men defender—I thought the final scene was insane and brave and really, really awesome—but I also objectively agree with a lot of the criticism that film has received over the years. I think the good will I felt for Garland after watching Annihilation for the first time was simply so immense that I would have applauded just about anything he decided to deliver next. But while I still feel the same way towards the film, Garland as a director is really starting to test the limits of that well of respect.

If you’ve seen Civil War, how do the two compare?

DG: There isn’t much comparison, but one quality that unites the two films to me is Garland’s refusal to sugarcoat anything in his films.

JO: You’ve got a prevailing sense of doom, you’ve got self-destruction, you’ve got a head-pounding sensory experience…but for me, Civil War’s ideas never come together in a way that satisfies and astounds like Annihilation.

EK: I totally agree with Jacob on this one. Between Civil War’s excellent use of sound and particular, Garland-esque aesthetic (that forest fire scene is especially stunning), it doesn’t feel like too much of a stretch to compare the films on an experiential level. But while we’re all still writing hundreds of words on the last 30 minutes of Annihilation, Civil War left me totally empty.

CW: Whatever Garland does in the future, whatever his legacy as a filmmaker, it won’t take away from what he did with Annihilation. For me, at least. It’s always interesting to see the same themes pop up in a filmmaker’s work (humanity’s dark tendencies, for instance), but I believe in looking at each work on its own merits. When I go back and watch Annihilation, as I’m sure I will, I won’t be thinking of Men or Civil War or even Ex Machina (which might be my favorite film of Garland’s). I’ll be thinking about the way it never fails to unsettle me.