Annihilation (Spoilers inside!!)

Oh yeah, I've been excited for Annihilation for a while based on source material (never read it, but some familiarity with Vandemeer), and Garland always seemed the right person for it. From the thread it sounds like something was lost in translation (and I've been burning the candle at both ends with the SF movie snark, so I'ma gonna take it easy today and rewatch Zardoz ).

Zardoz! The most ridiculous movie poster ever. Also, Annihilation is very well done. Gripping, creepy, thought-provoking. I have not read the novel yet, but the movie is my favorite of the last few months, even with The Shape of Water.

Well I seem to be against the tide but I enjoyed it. It's not perfect but I really liked the parallel between the shimmer and cancer/cancerous cells and also the different levels of "annihilation" / self-destruction described in the film.

I wouldn't say an unreliable narrator. Just that appearances can be deceiving.

Alessandra Kelley said:

I'm wondering about that because I have heard generally positive things about it elseweb.

It has a kind of unreliable narrator thing going, hasn't it?

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Kind of... I don't want to say too much in case you haven't seen it as I don't want to spoil it for you.

Saw it last night on Netflix, had no expectations (hadn't even heard of it, was hubby's suggestion), and I liked it! The world of the "shimmer" is creepy and beautiful, and Portman carried me along the journey.

I watched it on netflix too. My expectations were modest at best esp. in light of Paramount's conscious uncoupling with this film's international rights (eyebrows were raised yo).

But honestly? It was an OK experience. Sure, I did like 15 mins of simultaneous web browsing, and the sciencey stuff was a bit pedestrian, but the acting was great and I am partial to a good swamp. I enjoyed it enough to dig the book out of my TBR.

Saw it again last night, this time at the cinema and it looked amazing and so much more immersive on the bog screen. Plus, the screening was followed by a Q&A with Alex Garland. Also noticed a lot more details, and how the "refraction" works the 2nd time around. Also I need to watch it again because there was one details we couldn't confirm, and now I need to know if we're right!

Not having Netflix, I wait until movies come out on DVD. I read the book and when I finished it, watched the movie.

First comment: I know they have to change things for screenplays, but this was more like the screenplay was fan-fiction. They are that different.

Second comment: the last post in this thread was ~five months ago. And I still haven't figured out which shade of gray to use. So fair warning: there are book and movie spoilers below.

cornflake said:

... So in the book did any of that happen?

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Nope.

cornflake said:

.. Then it's all destroyed because she lit a match, which apparently no one thought of before then..

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It was a phosphorus grenade. She pulls the pin, still holding the trigger then lets go as she runs. I agree though, there was no explanation why burning the place down wasn't tried before.

onesecondglance said:

... Cornflake, a lot of what you're describing comes from the books, but in them, it's clear that the biologist is a deeply strange character, and the all-female crew is for other reasons I don't quite remember (something to do with the director of the institute going mad). The treatment of the husband doesn't sound like the same as in the books....

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The psychologist had issues in the book that weren't fully explained. Other things in the book about the 'mission' were never explained. The tunnel and the lighthouse were in two separate places in the book. Instead of finding two videos of the previous explorers (which was absurd to just happen to have had the biologist's (Portman) husband in them), she finds a huge pile of journals including her husband's and many from previous expeditions she wasn't told about.

Kjbartolotta said:

I just learned this movie has an Alzabo. That's kinda cool.

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Uhhh, sorry, I don't think that's what the beast was. The one in the movie was cool, especially the sounds it made. In the book it was completely different, a boor, and it didn't kill anyone. The scenes from the giant gator to the one member taking the others and tying them up didn't happen at all in the book.

There was so much in the book they didn't need to change, but they did.

Alessandra Kelley said:

... It has a kind of unreliable narrator thing going, hasn't it?

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Didn't see that in the book or the movie.

In the book, the biologist narrated throughout, it was all mostly inner monologue. So her thoughts made the story. There were no dream flashbacks. She didn't have an affair. Those two scenes seemed like gratuitous sex. Her husband was home much longer, they had a couple sex scenes, nothing erotic.

If anyone has any other questions about what happened in the movie and not in the book or vice-versa, I'll keep an eye on the thread for questions.