Macabre...ish Horror Review: Annihilation

Annihilation, 2018/ 2 hrs

A biologist, professor at Johns Hopkins, and veteran, Lena (Natalie Portman) gets her husband, Sgt Kane (Oscar Isaac) back after he vanishes for a year. Off on a mission but he can’t tell her anything, he’s barely coherent, then he starts coughing up blood. On the way to the hospital, the ambulance is overtaken by black suburbans and they remove her husband. Lena later wakes up in a facility.

A psychologist, Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) starts aggressively questioning her about her husband and what she knows about his mission. They then share with her some of what they know. Three years ago a lighthouse was surrounded by a shimmer, whatever goes in, never comes back. And the area is growing, it will eventually overtake cities and beyond.

A team of women, including Dr. Ventress, are going into the shimmer and Lena wants in, to find out what happened there and maybe save her husband. The mission is to find the source, it’s assumed to be the lighthouse, and return with data.

Immediately, in the area of the shimmer, no one can remember how they got there. The equipment also does not work. And things like plants and other natural things aren’t making any sense and shouldn’t exist. Whatever this shimmer is, it’s changing nature, different species of things are crossbred, mutations. Duplications. And it all feels like a dream and sometimes, a dangerous one.

They do find out what happened and what the shimmer is. And the longer they remain, the more their DNA changes.

This is a trippy sci fi horror. Good story, cast and effects. It’s graphic and sometimes gory. There are adult scenes and flashbacks.