Annihilation

[Custard]

Alex Garland's latest, and his second director's job (though it came out this week that he did in fact direct Dredd too)

Hmmm, thought it was alright. An interesting premise, and a decent slow-burning sci-fi, with a good cast. Doesn't quite match the hype it's been getting, mind. Got a bit bored halfway through, though came back around towards the end

I thought the CGI was pretty bad, and quite distracting. Natalie Portman doesn't seem to age, and is pretty decent in this. I dunno why Oscar Isaac bothered, really. Bit of a nothing role for him. Maybe he just really enjoyed working with Garland on Ex Machina. Ex Machina was better

Still, I did enjoy it. Well worth a butchers

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[Sin Agog]

Read the book while in hospital a few weeks ago, and it's a bit of a Young Adult version of Arkady Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic (a.k.a. Stalker), innit?  Wasn't a fan of the whisker-thin back-story it kept on cutting away to, but all the antics inside the Area were good.  Maybe I wouldn't have constantly thought back to peoples like Algernon Blackwood and Hope Hodgson if I hadn't already read an epic 1k+ pages anthology Vandemeer compiled called Compendium of the Weird, but he did seem to be drawing on other works a little too closely at times.  The movie strays away from some of the book's creepier elements at first for some reason (the tower) in favour of conjuring up a raggedy deserted military base feeling, which is disappointing, but other changes may improve it a bit (the ending), though I still think all that flaky back-story ("I was in a relationship with a dude") should have been done away with so as to lock the characters and audience in this stifling place.  Worth watching, especially for the last half hour.

[Paaaaul]

It definitely has shades of Stalker.
And 2001. And Arrival. And Apocalypse Now.

I enjoyed it. It'll definitely get a rewatch in the next few weeks.

[Schnapple]

I think Arrival is the most recent film it reminded me of, although it's flashback sequences possess little of the emotional weight beyond the initial setup. Then again, this is definitely a much more surreal and cerebral film, and perhaps they're not worth comparing. Fair fucks for Garland fighting for that final act, even if it did result in him getting banished to Netflix outside of the USA.

The talking bear could have been very silly, but was genuinely menacing.

[Custard]

Yeah, definite shades of Arrival, and many other films.

Bit weird seeing Thor's ex girlfriend (Portman) teaming up with his new one (Tessa Thompson), too. Lucky bastard

[Lord Mandrake]

It was very good I thought, influences as mentioned above and maybe just a hint of Under the Skin in there too. I loved the bit where she was like "Annihilation!"

[Jack Shaftoe]

I thought it was like Aliens but with more flowers, which was nice.

[buzby]

Saw this earlier and enjoyed it a lot. It does wear it's influences on it's sleeve a bit, but it was put together well and I liked the slow pacing, the mostly female cast and a decent performance by Portman (and yet another cameo for Benedict Wong). The sound and visuals of the ending were pretty impressive - I just wish I could have seen it on a big screen instead of a monitor.

[spamwangler]

Saw this totally hypeless and really liked it, I quite liked the dodgy Cgi even, the very modern hd look alongside dated but perfectly motion tracked Cgi is quite arresting, like seeing errol flynn with an ipad . I hope Netflix do more of this sort of low budget wonky sci-fi. And any day with benedict wong in is a good day

[buzby]

I hope Netflix do more of this sort of low budget wonky sci-fi.

It wasn't made by Netflix. It was sold to them by Paramount after they lost confidence in it following test screenings that suggested it might be too intellectual for a general audience, and Garland and the producer Scoot Rudin refused to make any changes. Thanks, morons.

And any day with benedict wong in is a good day

I still hear Sean Lock shouting  'Errol!' whenever he pops up.

[Moribunderast]

Loved this. Appalling that I/we were robbed of seeing it on a big screen due to test audiences being morons. I thought the pacing was spot-on actually and the bear-thing was one of the best horror sequences I've seen in ages. I'd agree the weak points of the film are the flashbacks and really the characterisation in general but as a sci-fi lark I thought it was compelling as fuck. Can only echo the relief that Garland wouldn't compromise on that final act as it made the film. The music during that portion was excellent too. Fuck, that whole segment in the cinema would've been quite breathtaking, I reckon. Causing this to go straight to Netflix outside of the US may be the stupidest thing the Americans have done in the past two years.

[spamwangler]

It wasn't made by Netflix. It was sold to them by Paramount after they lost confidence in it following test screenings that suggested it might be too intellectual for a general audience, and Garland and the producer Scoot Rudin refused to make any changes. Thanks, morons.

Ah thats interesting - the test screenings are dead wrong on that i think - it works as a straight up horror adventure even if you ignore all the macrocancer/dna type stuff i recon

[DocDaneeka]

Anyone else think the Shimmer looked eerily like a Thomas Kinkade painting?

[Avril Lavigne]

Anyone else think the Shimmer looked eerily like a Thomas Kinkade painting?

Now that you point it out, for sure.  It also kinda reminded me of the VFX for the slow-mo drug in Dredd, which Garland apparently secretly directed as well as writing :)

[Mass_Panic]

I liked this, been following Garland's work since he wrote The Beach all those years back and he rarely lets me down. I thought it perhaps suffered a tiny bit from not knowing what kind of film it wanted to be, but ultimately it worked - had some really nice ideas in it and great atmosphere all round.

[Twit 2]

He really can't do dialogue and exposition can he? This was even clunkier than Deus Ex, which itself made me groan in a few places. He's got ideas but he can't write for shit.

[Shaky]

Just watched this and, occasionally stilted dialogue and lesser supporting performances included, I liked it very much.  Every time it seemed to be trotting out a familiar trope it did something unexpected with it. Portman was very good. She looked a fair bit older in this and it really suits her, both in terms of performance and looks (sorry).

Reading a wiki synopsis of the book it very much seems as if Garland took the bare bones of the novel and did his own thing.

[Twit 2]

The last half hour was the most interesting, with the best visuals and score. The rest was a mess. Really can't see what people see in this.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It seemed pretty self-assured to me. What would you say makes it a mess?

Anyone else think the Shimmer looked eerily like a Thomas Kinkade painting?

I'm a philistine, so I didn't think of Kinkade or any other painter, but it is unusually colourful for a horror film. I did have strong memories of Under the Skin during the lighthouse scene. It's perhaps not quite as deeply chilling as that, but it's not far off.

There's a lot of symbolism to unpack. The lighthouse interior was rather womblike which, combined with the motif of mitosis, made me think Lena's affair had got up the duff. It feels like the team all being women is significant, but I dunno what it means.

[Dropshadow]

OK to just after they get inside the Shimmer. Then it devolves into a bog-standard, written-by-the-numbers crapfest, especially the last half hour or so. Awful.

[Josef K]

It's strange that I've not seen any comparisons to Uzumaki, seems like an obvious one - body horror, isolation zone with altered passage of time, creep lighthouse.

I quite liked it, some surprisingly creepy moments. Just read that Garland said no to a sequel which is probably wise

[Dex Sawash]

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WTF, I have to pay to go see it at theater.

[Bence Fekete]

Agree with the unbelievers on this one after a promising start.  Also I've watched Stalker recently and the difference in craftmanship just left me with that achy sort of feeling you get when you're watching something that constantly reminds you of something superior in nearly every way. 

As the plot inevitably pushed them in one direction I switched off.  The belly full of snakes was good.  Overall a great premise like others have said it felt stitched together from things it wanted to be.  Comparisons to The Andromeda Strain are way off. 

[Zero Gravitas]

Just read that Garland said no to a sequel which is probably wise

Shame, Control and the organization are far more interesting than some boring old space fungus.

I'd even quite liked the idea of Errol as Control, even if I don't think he conducted those interviews.

[Gregory Torso]

The scene with the bear was really creepy and tense, loved that bit. The rest of it, eh. The end bits inside the lighthouse looked like some of those windows media audio visualisers that used to spin around in time to limp bizkit in 2002.

[Bence Fekete]

Rewatched the ending.  Sporadically excellent really.  That flowery smoke alien with the muffled horns was nicely done.  Not so sure about the fish-suit dance-off but it was at least brave. 

It still feels so half cooked the way it is though.  I think Portman is a great actor but she wasn't given much to express beyond various phases of worried.  Can men write women?  I find Garland's characterisation analogous to Brooker's in a way, and maybe say Christopher Nolan as well - generally quite one-note and rigid. While yer Danny Boyle or a 1990s James Cameron or actually a Kathryn Bigelow seem to find a way to make you care about people who are about to die, even if they are mostly speaking jibberish for less than 10 seconds.

Not sure the modern crop have quite bridged that gap between realism (everything is so terribly forced and serious) and charm (what will x do next?).  Moon had charm.  The Abyss had charm.  You need charm. 

[thugler]

A total mess. At times looks very cheap and naff, very derivative, ending was interesting at least but some really bad exposition. What is it with netflix movies being so bad lately. Shame as the premise seemed to have potential, then the entire middle section of the film is dull.

[buzby]

A total mess. At times looks very cheap and naff, very derivative, ending was interesting at least but some really bad exposition. What is it with netflix movies being so bad lately.

Not a Netflix film. Paramount produced it but sold it to them rather than releasing it internationally themselves.

[thugler]

Not a Netflix film. Paramount produced it but sold it to them rather than releasing it internationally themselves.

Either way, what happened with them all

[Howj Begg]

So the killer bear scene was the only really good bit. Yeah the Rufus T Firely vocoder alien at the end was cool, to an extent, but the rest of the film was...bad. Natalie Portman cannot act. Jennifer Jason leigh did not have a particulalry good part. The others were forgettable. The Thomas Kinkade shimmer was lame and free of atmosphere. Meh.