Annihilation: Film Review

Alex Garland continues to be one to the more interesting directors out there.  The fact that he seems to focus on the sci-fi genre makes it all the better for me.  While only his third directing position after Dredd, and Ex Machina, his screenplays for 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go, and The Beach were also worthy mentions to his resume.

Annihilation is likely the most difficult of these to get through.  At points quiet and deliberately paced, it won't find interest among Snapchat aficionados.  This was recognized by Paramount and producer David Ellison who both wanted to change significant portions of the film in order to market it better to gain more commercial success.  Luckily Garland got his way and the film remained unaltered.  This has doomed the film to financial losses however as it appears to be headed for replacement in theaters in short order.  In fact, in markets other than the US, the film is headed straight for Netflix.

So what are most modern viewers missing?  A creepy, bloody, sometimes violent two hours of relatively unexplained weirdness.  Diverging heavily from the Jeff VanderMeer's trilogy, the film contains a complete beginning, middle and end and leaves nothing hanging for sequels.  In fact, beyond just a very basic scaffolding, the film contains little plot or events that are recognizable to the reader.  Ignore any mention of white-washing in the film...I've read the novels and attributing Asian or any other racial identities to the characters is virtually nonexistent and the fact that Garland used Portman as the lead shouldn't bother anyone except the SJW class of dimwits.

In the end our own film experiences are often derived from the histories we bring with ourselves to the theater.  For me, it boils down to a parable about a couple's attempt at recovery from infidelity seen through the prism of a sci-fi quest to discern the reasons behind an alien "shimmer" that spreads from a single point and mutates all it touches.  What comes out the other side are a husband and a wife completely different, down to their very genetic material than what they were before--the film seeming to say that through the prism of infidelity, all that you thought, were and did in the past is to meet a state of tabula rasa in order to function on the other side.

Along the way people are turned to plants, men are cut open and seen to contain giant worms on their insides, albino alligator-shark hybrids hunt the all female scientific team, a bear-something creature howls in a human voice before tearing apart one team member who has gone insane, and a near mirror finish alien-humanoid performs a mimicry dance in imitating Portman's every gesture.

I have a few quibbles...Like if the military was sending in a team to explore this anomaly, could they possibly have equipped this team worse?  No helmets?  No body armor?  And their overall gear looks more like they are out for a girl scout camping trip than a serious expedition.  Additionally...there isn't a single one of the female characters who looks comfortable with a gun...they all look like their skin might be allergic to the feel of metal on their skin and are stiff in their mannerisms in holding the weapons...someone needs some better training to at least LOOK like they know what they are doing...

I enjoyed it far better than the books from which the film came from as it does contain a resolution of its original questions and Garland's artistic voice is stronger and clearer than VanderMeer's who created an thrilling but ultimately empty world.  It took Garland to fill it with a reason to be.

Book Review: Authority (Southern Reach Trilogy Book 2)

I was in the middle of reading four books at the same time.  Authority was the last one I started but the first one I finished.

The second novel in the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer I previously reviewed the start of the series, Annihilation, previously stating how much I enjoyed it.  I was worried when I picked up Authority that it would leave me disappointed as a number of other series have done of late.  Instead Authority held me by the same tendrils that the first novel did and again it was virtually impossible to stop reading it.

Again we have a "weird" almost Lovecraft like situation but with a thoroughly modern take.  We cover the destruction of the first expedition into Area X and we know that a terrible fate befell them but if in a Hitchcock film the violence takes place off camera, here it takes place off page.  Vandermeer merely surrounds the action and horror with his words leaving the reader to fill in the blanks.  I've often watched films that do this, but rarely any novels.

Authority hides is surprises well and the reader gets an inkling of what might be going on but the depths of the mystery surrounding who or what controls the Southern Reach agency tasked with managing/investigating Area X and who or what may be on the chief protagonist's side are masked well throughout the work's length.

While taking place entirely outside of Area X whereas Annihilation took place entirely within Area X, Authority does retain a familiarity even though none of the characters in the second work are found in the first.  The "feel" of being in the South is there, the "feel" of being in the woods is there.  Vandermeer also keeps the reader's attention with a new perspective as well.  While Annihilation occurred from the standpoint of a biologist and its viewpoint followed suit with tangents on flora and fauna, Authority branches off into the inner workings of a CIA-like agency and instead we get discussions of missions to disrupt domestic terrorism and sleuthing procedurals.

Authority remains firmly bound by the "odd" world created in the first volume with a mysterious Area X gradually encroaching upon the modern world, destroying (?) everything as it grows and seemingly returning some expedition members in very changed states.  Yet here it does so only on this novel's borders...here the weirdness is not the central focus of the work but it is instead the motivator behind the more detective oriented story closing with a cliffhanger that requires you to read the concluding work--Acceptance.

Book Review: Annihilation

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer is the first of three novels that make up the Southern Reach trilogy.  I have only read this initial volume and so I don't yet know if the series comes to a satisfactory resolution or if it trails off into boring drivel.

I do know that this first work is an excellent piece of "weird fiction".  There is certainly a Lovecraftian feel to the entire novel both in its use of language, style and content, though its differences are more than significant enough to stand on its own.

The story surrounds an ill fated expedition that is following in the footsteps of previous ill fated expeditions to an location dubbed "Area X".  The first person speaker relaying the novel is the biologist assigned to this four woman expedition and she recounts her travels around this Area X and all the strange things we encounter.  There are dolphins with human eyes, large lizard creatures waiting in the weeds, nefarious team members, microscopic parasites, strange lighthouse keepers, indescribably beautiful/horrifying/powerful creatures from seemingly another world, etc.  No real explanation to many of these observations is given leaving the reader with the disquiet feeling that they only have a small insight into what is going on.

The locale of the tale is within a Southern "transition-land" between the swamps, grasses, forest and dunes bordering the ocean.  The author's favorite Southern hikes taking place in the St. Marks National Wildlife reserve in Florida is the inspiration for much of the book's geography and gives the tale a great feeling of "being there" as the voice coming out of the novel has a great tone of authenticity.  There is a bit of lengthy Lovecraft-like wordiness to the work which sometimes gets in the way of the story as you can be lulled into lethargy by paragraph length sentences at times, though luckily these are relatively rare.

I'm very interested in seeing where the groundwork put down in this work leads in the next two and hope the author didn't use up all his great ideas, mythmaking and mood creation on this one novel as he's certainly composed a world worth exploring further.  I'll label it as my favorite fiction work of '14.