The Weirdest Horror Sci-Fi Of The 2010s Just Got A Huge Upgrade
Alex Garland is fresh off writing back-to-back acclaimed horror movies in 28 Years Later and its follow-up, The Bone Temple, and his near quarter-century of experience in genre film has earned him the director’s chair for 2028’s Elden Ring. Since there’s still more than a year to go before we see how he tries to crack that very tough nut, now’s a good time to brush up on his filmography, and Paramount Pictures has made that easier thanks to a new 4K UHD Blu-ray release of Annihilation, perhaps the strangest and most confounding movie in a filmography that can offer a few claims to that title.
Based on Jeff VanderMeer’s short novel, Annihilation stars Natalie Portman as Lena, a botanist and former soldier who joins four other women on an expedition beyond the boundary of the mysterious Shimmer. All anyone on the top-secret project knows is that a meteor landed in Florida and produced an opaque, colorful barrier that’s slowly been expanding across the region. Everyone who’s been sent into the Shimmer to investigate has vanished without a trace… until Lena’s husband (Oscar Isaac) returns, alive but no longer himself. Now it’s Lena’s turn to go inside and find an explanation for the unexplainable before the Shimmer begins to swallow cities.
How Was Annihilation Received Upon Release?
Well, albeit with some befuddlement regarding its ambiguous ending. Appropriately for a movie whose characters all reach different conclusions about what they’re looking at, critics complimented everything from Annihilation’s approach to body horror to its psychoanalytic elements to the unique character dynamics produced by its nearly all-female cast. A minority did find it too slow and open-ended, but ultimately, critics like Alison Willmore and Chris Stuckmann summed up why the film is worth taking a chance on. Willmore, while admitting the movie would “frustrate the hell out of some people,” appreciated “how little it has in common with the current trends in mainstream science fiction,” while Stuckmann was one of several critics to call it the sort of film that makes you want to talk about it with friends for a long time afterward.
Annihilation was less successful at the box office, and ultimately failed to break even. It’s a challenging film that evades easy interpretations, and Garland and his producers resisted studio notes to rewrite the ending and make the taciturn, adulterous Lena a more sympathetic lead. In retrospect, it’s no big surprise that the movie struggled to find a wide audience, but the nice thing about being a fan is that we don’t have to worry about Skydance’s balance sheet. Annihilation certainly isn’t for everyone, but it continues to find supporters who appreciate the fact that its weirder edges were never sanded off.
Why Is Annihilation Worth Watching Today?
Because, while it was marketed as horror sci-fi, Annihilation is really a rare example of weird fiction made with a big budget. There are some visceral thrills to be had — it’s hardly a spoiler to say that the mutated bear featured on the 4K’s cover plays a memorable role — but ultimately, it’s a movie about how we attempt to grapple with the unexplainable both in the world and within ourselves. It’s a little like a Tarkovsky film that’s been updated for an even more faithless world, although if that’s too high-brow for you, please refer to the mutant bear attack again.
It’s also, as Willmore pointed out, nothing quite like anything else from either 2018 or today. We don’t want to give away too much here, but suffice it to say that the solution to the Shimmer does not involve blasting away some sinister aliens à la Independence Day. What Lena and her colleagues encounter behind its shifty barrier is a world where time, technology, and even biology no longer function as we thought we understood them. Plants and animals have shifted and merged into impossible combinations both beautiful and sinister, and it’s only a matter of time until the Shimmer begins affecting the humans inside it — and the damage the humans brought with them is reflected back. It might not be for you, but we rarely lose out by taking a chance on something different.
What Special Features Does The New Annihilation 4K Blu-Ray Have?
Unfortunately, there are no new special features on this release, although the 4K visuals and Dolby Atmos audio may be worth the upgrade on their own. The Blu-ray disc does include six legacy making-of features from the 2018 Blu-ray release, and together, these 8- to 15-minute videos discuss everything from the film’s casting process to the challenges of shooting on location. The whole thing comes packaged in a limited-edition SteelBook with appropriately unsettling artwork, if your movie shelf is in need of a little more disquieting imagery.
