Rent Annihilation (2018)
3.1 of 5 from 733 ratings
1h 50min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Biologist and former soldier Lena (Natalie Portman) is shocked when her missing husband (Oscar Isaac) comes home near death from a top-secret mission into The Shimmer, a mysterious quarantine zone no one has ever returned from. Now, Lena and her elite team must enter a beautiful, deadly world of mutated landscapes and creatures, to discover how to stop the growing phenomenon that threatens all life on Earth.
- Actors:
- Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Benedict Wong, Sonoya Mizuno, David Gyasi, Oscar Isaac, John Schwab, Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny, Sammy Hayman, Josh Danford, Kristen McGarrity, Kola Bokinni, Annarie Boor, Richard Clark, Bern Collaco, Helena Holmes, Honey Holmes, Cosmo Jarvis
- Directors:
- Alex Garland
- Producers:
- Eli Bush, Andrew MacDonald, Allon Reich, Scott Rudin
- Writers:
- Alex Garland, Jeff VanderMeer
- Studio:
- Paramount
- Genres:
- Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 01/04/2019
- Run Time:
- 115 minutes
- Languages:
- Canadian French Dolby Digital 5.1, English Audio Description Dolby Digital 5.1, English Dolby Atmos, Latin American Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles:
- Canadian French, English, English Hard of Hearing, Latin American Spanish
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.39:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Refractions: Story Origins
- For Those That Follow: Casting 'Annihilation'
- Shimmer: Shooting on Location
- Vanished Into Havoc: Visual and Special Effects
- And More!
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 01/04/2019
- Run Time:
- 115 minutes
- Languages:
- Canadian French Dolby Digital 5.1, English Audio Description Dolby Digital 5.1, English Dolby Atmos, Latin American Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles:
- Canadian French, English, English Hard of Hearing, Latin American Spanish
- DVD Regions:
- Region 2
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.39:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
More like Annihilation
Reviews (16) of Annihilation
Staid drama explodes into life at its end - Annihilation review by Alphaville
An interesting sci-fi idea takes too long to get to the point and, when it does, lacks drama. After a soporific half-hour, Natalie Portman and her team of sister scientists venture beyond a shimmering boundary into a mysterious zone that’s expanding to take over the world. Unnecessary intercutting between present and past slows the drama down even further. There are snatches of action, in which the scientists (who have now unbelievably become action women) shoot mutating creatures, then the sisters return to swapping bonding stories.
But then… out of the blue comes a spellbinding climax, where everything makes sense, where talk gives way to imaginative visuals and there’s suddenly a perfect electronic score with the best soundscape since Gravity. It shows what the film could have been. If only. Worth watching for that finale, though.
5 out of 7 members found this review helpful.
Huge build up that amounts to nothing. - Annihilation review by KT
Cinema Paradiso's own reviews calls this a "near-masterpiece". They must be talking about another film.
Film starts off shaky with the cast, then moves to annoying which sorts of help as at this point you're thinking some of the characters deserved to be killed off anyway.
Without spoiling the films plot details for those who are interested, I'll just say it's a huge disappointment, then again Natalie Portman and Sci-Fi just do not mix, just look at the weakest Star Wars films.
If someone was to fast-farward to the end scene of this film I'm sure most people will agree it's just plain stupid and disappointing.
4 out of 7 members found this review helpful.
Avoid - Annihilation review by JD3
If you avoid 1 Sci Fi film avoid this one.
It's only saving grace is that it is SO slow you can fast forward through major chunks and not miss a thing.
I love Natalie Portman. I would watch a film of her reading a menu but totally miscast and let down by a horror of a script and plot but I hesitate to use that word.
4 out of 6 members found this review helpful.
Critic review
Annihilation review by Adrijan Arsovski - Cinema Paradiso
Annihilation, in its own right, is a near-masterpiece. Near because most of its peculiar ideas (both visual and thematic-wise) are either borrowed from other films or books, or packed in such a way that pays an homage to the works that it also borrows from. It’s a strange relationship between the old and the new, where the old both inspires and breaks through the new via visual mastery that is ambiguous in the least – and straight up confusing at the most. So, what are these works that Annihilation borrows from? Well, two words (okay, maybe three): Tarkovsky, Kubrick, and Stanislaw Lem. Okay, four words, but three persons.
Right from the get-go, Annihilation starts off slowly and omits any relevant information that might put some perspective in the viewer’s mind. Despite of some mistaking this as a slow-burning intro, it is actually a good storytelling and kudos to the filmmakers for understanding just that. See, when you start with a 100% reliable narrator (whoever that might be) – then all sense of mystery is lost and you’re actually “hearing” the film instead of “watching” the film. There are exceptions to this rule, seen in films such as ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy (Cate Blanchet) or another fairly underrated and unjustly-bashed smaller live feature called ‘Dylan Dog’ (Brandon Routh). The narration in these films is impeccably done and should be a book example on future filmmakers on how to do narration properly. But anyways, I digress: Annihilation features none of it, and is all the better for it.
In the film, Lena (Natalie Portman) wakes up in some facility with a hard case of partial amnesia and tries to make sense to whatever had happened to her right before the wake. Meanwhile, there are scientists and people in biohazard suits questioning Lena about her previous whereabouts, the fate of her team members, and other things that seem as distant and alien to Lena as she herself seems to them.
All of that is set in the film’s present day, and when Annihilation finally goes back to unravel the mystery to whatever happened before, it becomes abundantly clear that the majority of the chronology would depict events in retrospective in light of the main event. What is this main event you may ask? Well, I don’t know for certain: all I know was that it involves some kind of Aether aliens, DNA, and the Earth’s atmosphere. Doesn’t that sound suspiciously familiar? Well, the answer is, again, yes. That’s exactly how ‘Solaris’, written by Stanislaw Lem and later adapted by Andrey Tarkovsky, also tells its fairly poignant and dramatic sci-fi tale.
In fact, it would be only fair to say that Annihilation is a beautiful amalgamation between ‘Solaris’ and ‘Stalker’; ‘Solaris’ in its thematic subject, and ‘Stalker’ in its visual splendor. And why Kubrick? Mostly because of the film’s excellent sets and visually masterful camera work, which I would not dare to spoil further.
Bottom line: Annihilation is a must-see and that’s non-debatable (preferably on your own in a dark room, headphones, and a love lamp to keep you company).