I tried to preorder the 4k blu-ray on Amazon only to discover that it's a Best Buy exclusive. Is this a new trend?
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Annihilation |OT| A Shimmer Out Of Space [Spoilers]
- Thread starter More_Badass
- Start date
This is one weird ass movie. Reading through the comments here it's clear that I missed quite a bit watching it. Also, what the fuck at that bear. That did lady become the bear? Why is there a human skull in that bear. That's terrifiying.
Anyway, I enjoyed it. But if I were to describe it I'd say that it was mediocre with hints of amazing sprinkled in it. There was something oddly low budget to it. And there was a bit too little to grasp on to. So many nuggets of interesting bits with so little resolve. I dunno.
Anyway, I enjoyed it. But if I were to describe it I'd say that it was mediocre with hints of amazing sprinkled in it. There was something oddly low budget to it. And there was a bit too little to grasp on to. So many nuggets of interesting bits with so little resolve. I dunno.
The lady didn't become the bear, though it is likely the bear may contain/be a member from a previous expedition - since Area X re-purposes and mutates DNA from new things as it comes into contact with them - people turning into tree people, the flowers, the ... thing that grew into/out of the pool wall, natalie portman's character.
The bear being mutated, can mimic the sounds/etc of things it comes into contact with - and it did eat one of Natalie Portman's team, so she likely screamed at it as she died, thus it repeated those noises
Bought this film on itunes, the soundtrack is moody. That bear by far the most frightening thing in a long while.
Surprised to hear so many people disliking the guitar parts of the score. Thematically it seems obvious to start with that before bringing all the synths out.
I imagine we'll have to wait a couple of months after the DVD/Blu-ray release on May 29.
VanderMeer AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/8n90mp/im_jeff_vandermeer_author_of_borne_and_the/
I don't think he's a fan of the movie lol
I don't think he's a fan of the movie lol
"I'm still trying to process all of that. On one level, I'm really glad they're different enough the movie doesn't eclipse the book. Most readers who first saw the movie and then experienced the books have been very kind in being delighted the book and movie are different experiences, just because reading the books hasn't then been repetitive."
I'm in that boat, I fucking loved the movie so much that I got all the books and I loved all three as well. I enjoyed how they ended up being pretty different.
I watched this last night and was just thoroughly bored the entire time. I like Alex Garland but this movie honestly did nothing for me at all.
edit: I did enjoy the brief bit in the lighthouse with Natalie Portman staring into the alien as it was shifting or whatever.
edit: I did enjoy the brief bit in the lighthouse with Natalie Portman staring into the alien as it was shifting or whatever.
Just watched this last night as well, hated it. First, I usually hate a movie that jumps time frames. Second, dialogue that is purposely stilted and deliberately spoken slow or soft to elicit a specific mood or tone drives me crazy because people very rarely talk like that in real life. Third, they think they're smart and are subtly hinting at themes of self destruction, but they aren't. The woman in the boat outright tells you their flaws and Portmans flashbacks drive it right home. Fourth, it's not scary, at all. The bear scene that occurred during the blatant ripoff of The Thing was mildly spooky. But, the CGI was pretty bad. Better than the cheesy giant gator, but still bad. And lastly, the score is annoying as fuck.
Yeah, I don't know why this movie go such great reviews - I found it to be dull and derivative. There were no characters to speak of - sure, there were "characters", but they were so underwritten, they may as well have been robots. The most interesting horror/sci-fi movies still have interesting characters above all else.
I absolutely loved this film. Probably in my top 3 of 2018, so far at least.
There was no way they'd be able to perfectly translate the book, but given the strangeness of the source material, they got insanely close. The end result feels surprisingly similar.
Just the themes of nature growing out of our control again are so incredibly potent with this film, I truly love it. There's a big chance I'll actually buy it.
There was no way they'd be able to perfectly translate the book, but given the strangeness of the source material, they got insanely close. The end result feels surprisingly similar.
Just the themes of nature growing out of our control again are so incredibly potent with this film, I truly love it. There's a big chance I'll actually buy it.
Bought the 4K Vudu version bundled with Arrival for $20.
Saw it in the theaters and loved it. Rewatching and finding so many things I missed.
Saw it in the theaters and loved it. Rewatching and finding so many things I missed.
Thanks to Ghos for pointing me to the real thread!
Oh my god. That was unexpected and astonishing. While it had a bunch of genuinely dread-filled scares, I can't think of it as anything other than pure sci-fi, and one of the most genuinely alien "aliens" ever put on screen. In fact, I love the movie's message that it might not actually be an organism at all - but a phenomenon - like weather or gravity.
And I can't tell you how giddy I was when the movie didn't end at the lighthouse. What happens from that point on is INCREDIBL:E.
Full disclosure: I had a flicker of disappointment when the eyes changed color (dumb horror trope) but even that was a powerful twist//inversion of the trope - because it reframed everything that happened with the reflective biped: She didn't defeat the Shimmer at all. The Shimmer finished its evolution/conquest/matching/alien-as-hell process - like some sort of refracting chrysalis, and emerged as those two. It won. It used the flash grenade (and the remaining parts of her) to clean up its mess so it could move onto it's next stage, whatever that is.
I think on reflection, it shits on Interstellar and the Arrival in terms of its portrayal of something legitimately and truly alien.
I think it's a masterpiece and it's easily in my top ten sci-fi of all time. I need to digest more and rewatch. I shoulda bought it and not rented it, but the three star average gave me pause. reading this thread kind of shines a light on why some people didn't like/get it. I can see that. In that regard it's kinda like A.I.
This is head-canon, but I was speculating that some part of the process (the bruising seemed to come from nowhere, remember) was creating amnesia about something that happens as soon as you enter the Shimmer.
Oh my god. That was unexpected and astonishing. While it had a bunch of genuinely dread-filled scares, I can't think of it as anything other than pure sci-fi, and one of the most genuinely alien "aliens" ever put on screen. In fact, I love the movie's message that it might not actually be an organism at all - but a phenomenon - like weather or gravity.
And I can't tell you how giddy I was when the movie didn't end at the lighthouse. What happens from that point on is INCREDIBL:E.
Full disclosure: I had a flicker of disappointment when the eyes changed color (dumb horror trope) but even that was a powerful twist//inversion of the trope - because it reframed everything that happened with the reflective biped: She didn't defeat the Shimmer at all. The Shimmer finished its evolution/conquest/matching/alien-as-hell process - like some sort of refracting chrysalis, and emerged as those two. It won. It used the flash grenade (and the remaining parts of her) to clean up its mess so it could move onto it's next stage, whatever that is.
I think on reflection, it shits on Interstellar and the Arrival in terms of its portrayal of something legitimately and truly alien.
I think it's a masterpiece and it's easily in my top ten sci-fi of all time. I need to digest more and rewatch. I shoulda bought it and not rented it, but the three star average gave me pause. reading this thread kind of shines a light on why some people didn't like/get it. I can see that. In that regard it's kinda like A.I.
This is head-canon, but I was speculating that some part of the process (the bruising seemed to come from nowhere, remember) was creating amnesia about something that happens as soon as you enter the Shimmer.
I love how ambiguous the movie is. Personally at the end of the lighthouse I viewed it as the "real" Portman "winning" at the end and killing the alien replica, BUT she was changed so much by the shimmer that she isn't the same person (or even species) that she was originally (so who knows what her or the alien's goals are at this point).
And totally agree that it's way more alien than either of those movies, but Interstellar felt more like it was trying to ground stuff in more reality and keep it human focused (which is definitely a bummer in any movies that decide to take things out of our solar system IMO).
Arrival I thought was reasonably alien, but it was way more about their language (and their perspective of time) than it was about the "alienness" of the aliens, physically they're basically just big squids.
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Or indeed if it has a goal. "I don't know what it wants. I don't know IF it wants."
I think Time is going to test this one out, like The Thing.
Yep - I LOVE that. When writing sci-fi, I am often forced to align with convention because it's comprehensible - and bluntly games need bipedal analogs of the protagonist for symmetry - but I often tell people that the Star Trek school of bipedal human analogs doesn't even make sense on Earth, where the spider just over there in the corner is fantastically different to a person.
Creating an antagonist with no relatable moral compass or motivation is something that's typically reserved for natural disasters like Twister or Deep Impact - which of course you could argue is precisely what Annihilation is.
=)
In an odd way, I hope it impacts some thoughts on Halo series stinkle. Would be an interesting microcosm to view the flood, or precusers in a similar manner to the shimmer
Oh I've always thought about it in those terms, just never expected to see a movie do it so well. Our conversations with Greg Bear about the Precursors leaned on that a little.
stinkles responded to me! =D
to add on to this, I toyed with the thought that the movie altered from the books further, that the "time jump" and "amnesia" is actually not amnesia.
That as soon as we the viewer see them in the shimmer, it is 1 week after they've been in it, and reached the lighthouse, and were duplicated. That we actually were viewing the first duplicates, who were slowing reconstructing similar memories as the originals, and as they reached near the edge of the bubble they reformed some memories that they were supposed to go to the lighthouse.
Kinda like jepg compression, or scanning images. after a few thousand times the current iteration does not resemble the first iteration
then this process would repeat itself until the "duplicates" were so far distanced from the originals that they were becoming something that was entirely different.
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Saw the movie this weekend and I loved how it shows you how different a movie like Predator or Alien could be if treated from a different POV. These kinds of movies are always shot under the perspective of macho glorified violence or under the terrified victim. Here we see a different angle, something that tries to go a bit deeper and not as simplistic as "alien entity just wants to murder your ace"
I wanna say its almost like a pacifist take on the genre, but thats not quite right. Really left an impression though.
I wanna say its almost like a pacifist take on the genre, but thats not quite right. Really left an impression though.
I LOVED this movie, but I did have a question while watching it.
Is there any in-universe explanation for why these DNA mash-ups look so, well, natural? I was under the impression that everything within the Shimmer was randomly mixing and matching DNA, but aside from the bear, most of the creatures looked kind of normal.
After thinking about it some more, I was wondering why we didn't see more body horror, or creatures similar to the Thing. I get that that's not what this movie was going for, but it just seemed odd that all of the mutations we see look pretty normal.
For example, out of all the possible animals and plants that could have mixed with that crocodile, the only difference is it has shark teeth? If the Shimmer is reflecting all DNA, I'd expect the changes to be much more grotesque and unnatural.
Like I said, I really enjoyed the film. This was just a question I had after thinking about it for a few days.
Is there any in-universe explanation for why these DNA mash-ups look so, well, natural? I was under the impression that everything within the Shimmer was randomly mixing and matching DNA, but aside from the bear, most of the creatures looked kind of normal.
After thinking about it some more, I was wondering why we didn't see more body horror, or creatures similar to the Thing. I get that that's not what this movie was going for, but it just seemed odd that all of the mutations we see look pretty normal.
For example, out of all the possible animals and plants that could have mixed with that crocodile, the only difference is it has shark teeth? If the Shimmer is reflecting all DNA, I'd expect the changes to be much more grotesque and unnatural.
Like I said, I really enjoyed the film. This was just a question I had after thinking about it for a few days.
Really enjoyed the movie, but I thought it was uneven. A couple things that bugged me (sorry if this has been mentioned):
- So many plot holes
- Why does Ventress know so much about the shimmer (e.g., the mutations get more severe the closer you are to the lighthouse) when they have no data from inside and no idea what is happening.
- If the goal is to take the shore to the lighthouse, why not boat/fly in?
- Why don't they wear gas masks or hazmat suits when entering the shimmer? I'm pretty sure that if I'm going on a mission to a creepy area that kills everyone or causes everyone to kill each other, I'm going to suit up. Should we assume they tried that previously? In fact, they quarantined Lena and wore hazmat suits around her when she returned. So why didn't they do that in the first place?
- If we assume the phosphorus grenade killed the alien organism/thing and that narrator Lena is the real Lena (which, I'd argue, we have to otherwise we have no idea if any of the plot actually happened), you're telling me they didn't try nuking the lighthouse? Why didn't the first phosphorus grenade kill everything? Do you have to kill the doppelganger?
- Why didn't Kane 2.0 die along with the rest of the shimmer?
- Again, assuming it's real Lena, why does she develop the tattoo. Tattoos aren't part of anything's dna.
- How did she know where to find Cassper's corpse? Why did she go by herself?
- "Sharks have teeth like that, don't they?" "Do you think it's a crossbreed?" "You can't crossbreed between different species."
- Sure - crossbreeding is intra-species, but hybrids do exist. Donkeys, and ligers and beefalo, oh my.
- What was up with Ventress being so muted at the beginning of the movie, and then speaking normally or yelling at other parts. It felt like two different characters at times.
The movie is so far off the book that it's its separate universe.
The book series does explain that stuff.
Hybrids are between closely related species. Sharks and alligators aren't that close, and they probably have different chromosome counts, making them biologically incompatible.
I understand that. You can't crossbreed between different species" is still incorrect, though. Maybe it's a bit nitpicky, but I don't think a JHU medical professor would say that. Maybe, "you can't crossbreed a shark and an alligator. Their genetic makeup isn't compatible."
-Theyve sent other teams in that didn't all die right away. The area inside the shimmer used to be the base of operations for the Project
-The goal of the expeditions isn't just the lighthouse. It's Lena/Ventress' main goal because they believe there is something there.
-I'm not sure why they trek in without hazmat suits. I'm curious about that one myself
-The area wasn't always a wasteland, so nuking it would be a bigger problem, especially since they don't know anything about it and it's a secret government project. Launching a nuke at the Florida coast is going to raise some eyebrows
-Once youre outside the barrier you're not affected the same way as when you're inside. 'Kane' got out and started breaking down until his body got used to no longer being connected
-The tattoo isn't a tattoo in the traditional sense. It's just a mark that you've been changed by the shimmer. Each team member has it at some point, but Josie most visibly before she goes tree.
-She followed a trail to the body. Why on her own? I don't recall the circumstances of the scene well enough to respond to that, but military training + distrust of the others is my guess
Thanks, very helpful! A few responses/outstanding questions in bold.
Just watched it finally tonight. Some of these "plot hole" points I might have sympathized with at the beginning, like yeah why the hell aren't they in full hazard/biosuits, but these concerns were soon forgotten. The scene close to the end where JJL's character transforms was an absolute audiovisual powerhouse that evaporated any minor nitpicks that may have been lingering. Great slow burn of a movie.
I liked it a lot.
Couldn't quite latch onto the depression metaphor the first time through, but it clicked perfectly on a rewatch once I had some added context for lines like "You know I love you", "I know you did why you did, and now I know what I have to do", "I owed him", etc. I got the general gist on the first watch, but seeing those sorts of scenes with the full picture in mind did a lot more to illustrate the whole idea of depressive self-disregard and Lena and Kane's respective ends. There are a ton of great thematic and visual ties throughout the movie that added a plenty of value to the rewatch, would definitely recommend a second viewing for anyone who enjoyed it.
I don't know if the movie left me feeling like I got enough of what I wanted, but I don't know what more I could ask of it either.
Couldn't quite latch onto the depression metaphor the first time through, but it clicked perfectly on a rewatch once I had some added context for lines like "You know I love you", "I know you did why you did, and now I know what I have to do", "I owed him", etc. I got the general gist on the first watch, but seeing those sorts of scenes with the full picture in mind did a lot more to illustrate the whole idea of depressive self-disregard and Lena and Kane's respective ends. There are a ton of great thematic and visual ties throughout the movie that added a plenty of value to the rewatch, would definitely recommend a second viewing for anyone who enjoyed it.
I don't know if the movie left me feeling like I got enough of what I wanted, but I don't know what more I could ask of it either.
Watched this to ight and actively hated almost every minute of it.
The characters are hollow, the story is nonsense, and the film is painfully boring.
The characters are hollow, the story is nonsense, and the film is painfully boring.
Saw it a few days ago.
It felt like an update on The Thing in many ways and what impressed me most about was how it made you have to think super abstractly to wrap your mind around what the alien organism might be and what it's life cycle and/or effects on life were.
Only issues I'm having are, as a horror movie, I'm not sure it worked as well for me as I'd liked, and there were some moments that took me out of the story a bit like when teams of researchers and soldiers actually went in without hazard suits...? Why not first send in advanced robotics built for the purpose of gathering data before sending in humans (if at all)? Was this something that was addressed in the film that I missed (which wouldn't surprise me as there's lots of stuff that went over my head on my first viewing going by the write-ups ITT)?
It felt like an update on The Thing in many ways and what impressed me most about was how it made you have to think super abstractly to wrap your mind around what the alien organism might be and what it's life cycle and/or effects on life were.
Only issues I'm having are, as a horror movie, I'm not sure it worked as well for me as I'd liked, and there were some moments that took me out of the story a bit like when teams of researchers and soldiers actually went in without hazard suits...? Why not first send in advanced robotics built for the purpose of gathering data before sending in humans (if at all)? Was this something that was addressed in the film that I missed (which wouldn't surprise me as there's lots of stuff that went over my head on my first viewing going by the write-ups ITT)?
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