Great art invites interpretation, not by being needlessly obtuse, but by encouraging the viewers to explore certain ideas and concepts that are presented uniquely.Alex Garland’s sci-fi film,Annihilation, is great art because it leaves its audience unsettled, winding its story into the realm of the unexpected — particularly for those viewers who were just expecting a run-of-the-mill sci-fi action movie. As such, it’s also a movie bound to frustrate and infuriate some viewers who crave clarity and normalcy. The movie veers into the unexpected, yet in a pointed way. Sequences likeTessa Thompsonsprouting leaves andpeople getting attacked by a bear with human screams, for example, are horrifying, but with specificity.
While Garland first made a name for himself through writing, with films like28 Days LaterandNever Let Me Godeserving of accolades and praise galore, his work as a director has yet to disappoint. His most recent venture,Civil War, is the most grounded of the lot (though it’s not without its allegory). Still, everything helmed by Garland beforeCivil Warhas leaned heavily into the realm of potentially difficult-to-decipher.Annihilationexists largely in the realm of metaphor.It’s meant to put you in the same dreamlike state as the characters, offering explanations for what’s happening but never announcing its themes as it tries to weave subtext into the text. So what exactly is happening withAnnihilation?In short, it’s a movie about cancer.
‘Annihilation’ Is a Metaphor For Cancer
No one in the movie says, “It’s about cancer,” but it’s clear within the first 15 minutes that the premise of Garland’s movie is basically,“What if the Earth — that is, the planet itself — got cancer?”And then the film moves forward from that premise. The plot may be about a biologist, Lena (Natalie Portman), who, along with fellow scientists Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), Sheppard (Tuva Novotny), and Radek (Thompson), heads into The Shimmer – a scientific phenomenon that appears to be a portal to another dimension. Lena embarks on this mission seeking answers after her husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac), returns from The Shimmer and is completely changed by his experience there.
We settle into the movie’s core metaphor from Lena’s first lecture at Johns Hopkins. She talks about cell division, particularly how cells rapidly divide and mutate. We then cut back three years earlier when a mysterious something struck a lighthouse in the Southern Reach and that thing started expanding. The unexplained phenomenon makes a good stand-in for how cancer strikes. Everything is normal, and then it’s not, and in its place is something that’s mutating and, like The Shimmer, expanding. Yes, we can talk about risk factors, but some perfectly healthy people still get cancer.It’s not that cancer is inexplicable, but rather, our understanding of it is still evolving.
Once Lena and the team are inside the Shimmer, they start noticing mutations, which represent cancer (the tumor at the heart of the Shimmer) affecting other cells. Garland is basically taking a biological phenomenon and staging something similar toFantastic Voyage, except instead of the scientists shrinking down to go inside someone’s body, the body they’re investigating is the Earth. Everything gets messed up because of mutations, and asRadek later explains to the group, they’re basically inside of a prism, so everything is refracting. Minds, bodies — everything gets screwed up because that’s what cancer does to a healthy body.
‘Annihilation’ Remains Consistent With Its Metaphor
But Garland presents this in a very specific way. It’s not likeThe Cloverfield Paradox, where anything can happen and nothing is explained, so one dude is filled with worms and another has a severed arm that offers hints when you’re stuck.Annihilationremains consistent, constantly showing mutations as they would occur in a body.Garland wisely abstains from presenting everything as simply gross or beautiful.There’s a calculated indifference. Life grows and mutates, and sometimes you might see something beautiful like the white, skeletal deer with branches for antlers, and sometimes you get the mutant bear.
Although Garland loosely adaptedJeff VanderMeer’snovel of the same name, certain details bolster the cancer metaphor. For example, the expedition team is all women. From a plot perspective, this is explained by pointing out that previous teams were men, and this could change the results of the expedition. But, it’s also worth noting thatthe second-most common form of cancer is breast cancer, which largely affects women. Additionally, even though all the characters are doctors (admittedly, Thorensen is in a gray area because she’s an EMT) of some kind, the only character referred to repeatedly as “Doctor” is Dr. Ventress. Although she’s a psychologist by trade, her function in the story has little to do with psychology and more with seeing people go inside The Shimmer and not return. That wouldn’t be too different from an oncologist who loses a lot of patients. Of course, knowledge is no defense against cancer, andVentress literally has cancer in the movie.
How Does Cancer Relate to Lena’s Story?
Cancer relates to Lena’s flashbacks in much the same way that Lena’s self-destruction creates a conflict in her marriage. Her story is basically the heart of the movie. If you cut out her strained relationship with her husband, her guilt over cheating on him, and her desperation to find something that might be able to save him, then you have a movie that’s still fascinating, but also cold. There’s no emotional center to it because then you just have five people walking through The Shimmer. Everything in the flashbacks is the humanity that’s tied to each individual — our regrets, hopes, and dreams. For Lena, her story is about trying to find redemption. That’s why when she talks about trying to rescue Kane,she doesn’t say “I love him.” She says, “I owe him.”
AsAnnihilationgoes on, and we get closer to the Shimmer, we lose Sheppard and Thorensen, and Garland wisely doesn’t make that surprising. He tells us in the opening minutes that those characters die and then lets us wonder what exactly happened to Radek and Ventress. But the ending for all four characters is death of some kind. Radek notes that Ventress “wants to face it” and Lena “wants to fight it," but ultimately, she just accepts it.Sometimes people go violently, and others slip away.
The Cancer Metaphor Extends Beyond Just Death in ‘Annihilation’
The reason why The Shimmer doesn’t stand in foralldeath goes back to the imagery Garland hits us with throughout the movie. Everything in the movie metastasizes and changes. We get plenty of shots of cells diving. When we see the dead soldier in the swimming pool, his body has basically broken apart and expanded the way a cancer cell would destroy a healthy cell. The Lighthouse itself has a growth highly reminiscent of a tumor. If Garland simply wanted to show “death” in all its forms, he would have used different imagery like blood or ashes.It’s also telling that Ventress, the only character who literally has cancer, goes through the literal definition of annihilationas it relates to physics, “The conversion of matter into energy, especially the mutual conversion of a particle and an antiparticle into electromagnetic radiation.”
‘Annihilation’ Is Vastly Different From the Book, For Good Reason
A once-in-a-lifetime novel became an instant sci-fi classic.
So, why doesn’t the same thing happen to Lena? For the same reason that cancer doesn’t kill everyone who gets it. Butwhen we see Lena face off with her alien mirror, that’s a powerful visual representation of cancer. Cancer is both alien and in our cells. It’s not an infection or a virus. It’s our own bodies turned against us, which is what happens to Lena in the lighthouse. The only way she’s able to destroy it is with a phosphorous grenade,which may as well stand in for chemotherapy. It’s a destructive force meant to snuff out the alien being that’s also a part of us.
For his part, inan interview at Google,Garland said the movie is about “self-destruction,”and on a metaphysical level,Annihilationcertainly has that. Ventress and Lena even have a conversation saying how self-destruction and suicide aren’t the same thing. But if you look atAnnihilationas a movie about cancer, then that self-destruction becomes, in a sense, literal. Cancer is the destruction of the self by biological means, andAnnihilationshows that self-destruction is reflected in the environment. When we think of “self-destruction,” we usually think of someone trashing their apartment or drinking heavily. InAnnihilation, we see it on a biological level.
Garland Truly Treats His Endings Like Grand Finales
What occurs inAnnihilation’s final act is nothing short of a transcending, mind-bending experience. This is Alex Garland’s specialty. Don’t worry, the focus here is onAnnihilation, so none of his other works will have their endings spoiled, but there’s a discussion worth having for those who’ve followed his career.Garland loves to create a triumphant grand finale, with special attention paid to the term: grand.Ex Machina, a wildly effective directorial debut, closed its runtime with a level of intensity and you-cannot-guess-what-happens-next that should not be attainable in one’s first outing.Civil Warconsists of a series of vignettes as the core cast makes their way to an ultimate destination, mostly filled with the conversation and inner monologues of a few journalists documenting the conflict. However, its ending occurs almost entirely without words, putting us directly on the front lines of sheer terror. The film pays its dues so steadfastly that its final moments are well-earned, of course, but also downright gut-wrenching.
Even the least-viewed and lowest-rated of the bunch,Men,absolutely falls into the category of criminally underrated, fully thanks to its final act. Bear any opinion you’d like regarding its plot or execution, the final sequence ofMenplays out like a beautiful nightmare, marked by a grotesquely visualized soliloquy.And then there’sAnnihilation, which flaunts Garland’s most captivating grand finale.From the moment Lena enters the lighthouse and descends into its tunnel,Geoff BarrowandBen Salisbury’s score takes hold, and all sense of plot and duration evaporates. Ventress delivers a final monologue before evaporating into beams of light and eventual nothingness, after softly uttering “Annihilation” with content despair and acceptance. A drop of blood from Lena floats into the amorphous chasm under the lighthouse, and, like cancer, rapidly mutates and multiplies until her mirror version is formed. The entire sequence building to her chilling dance and defeat with the mirror self plays like aterrifying, captivating alien symphony.
‘Annihilation’s Last Scene Is Its Most Cryptic
We see Kane, who has recovered, and Lena, back together. She recognizes that this Kane is not her Kane, but likely the copy that was created inside the lighthouse.They’re both “survivors” and he is permanently changed by his experience. When we see The Shimmer in both of their eyes, it’s a reminder that cancer is never truly exterminated. It also ties back into the nature of their marriage, of which the basis has mutated. They’re different people now, and even if you removed all the sci-fi stuff and simply had a wife reuniting with her husband after cheating on him, which is what caused him to leave in the first place, they would be forever changed.
Moreover, with the focus of the film’s ending fixed on Lena and thismirror version of her husband, questions remain regarding The Shimmer and its effect on the area.WhileAnnihilationleaned into the cancer theme above all else, that’s not all the film has to say.As a term, cancer means more than a medical ailment, and the idea of “cancerous” as an adjective reaches beyond biology. Much of the movie depicts the change inflicted on nature; the landscape, plant life, andanimals drastically morph, sometimes horrifically. Themes of environmentalism and government intervention (or impotence) begin to emerge. In what ways is humanity cancerous toward our world?
‘Annihilation’ Strays From the Novel, but Remains Open to Its Sequels
Much of the film departs from its source material.For one, the core characters don’t even have names in the book — Lena is referred to as the biologist, Ventress is the psychologist, and so on. Like the film, the novel also reveals or spoils much of the outcome early on, as the entirety is made of the biologist’s journal, recovered after the expedition. With that, the perspective is much more confined to the biologist. What’s most exciting is the possibility left open for sequels.
While neither Garland nor the studio have released any indication of developing further entries,VanderMeer has two other books in the series, and a fourth is on the way. The Southern Reach Trilogy (which may need to be renamed The Southern Reach Series once the fourth arrives) consists ofAnnihilation,Authority,Acceptance, and later this month,Absolution. It seems like much of the second book,Authority, was read and adapted to suit the needs of the film. Lomax (Benedict Wong), the official donning a hazmat suit in the flash-forwards depicting Lena’s interrogation, is the central character ofAuthority.
The great success ofAnnihilationas an adaptation is its willingness to stray from the source material without abandoning the premise or theme. Elements like the psychologist’s use of hypnosis over the rest of the team would merely result in disjointed time jumps in the format of a film, so the idea is only implied upon the group’s entry into The Shimmer. If you hadn’t read the novel, you wouldn’t even assume Ventress was responsible for their disorientation. In the subsequent books, we get an added element of the inner workings of Area X / The Southern Reach. With the government officials largely operating with as much confusion as those within The Shimmer,the metaphor of cancer (and, by extension, those attempting to cure and treat it) remains consistent.
So, Why Not Just Make a Movie About Cancer?
And why go so broad with self-destruction? Perhaps because we tend to get only one kind of cancer movie, which is about the individual cancer patient. And that makes sense because it’s dramatic, it’s tear-jerking, and, sadly, relatable to many people who have seen friends and family stricken with the disease.But what makesAnnihilationspecial is that it wants to confront the cold, uncaring horror of it all.The mutant scream bear isn’t just a horrifying creation that can rip you apart; this creature also stands in for the fear of how people will remember your dying moments. The fear of a cancer patient that they’ll be remembered not for who they were, but for their final moments of agony.Thecharacters inAnnihilationalso, in many ways, represent the five stages of grief.Yes, there’s a sense of “self-destruction” in that one’s identity is destroyed, but it’s also a specific experience of death.
That’s why when Lomax, the scientist debriefing Lena, says, “So it was alien,” the line lands with such a thud.Yes, on a literal level, the whole thing is “alien," but that term is so broad as to be rendered meaningless.Garland didn’t make a movie about extraterrestrials. He made a movie about us and the most horrifying thing many of us will confront in some way during our lifetimes. A thing so powerful it can transform us into seemingly unrecognizable, or alien, versions of ourselves — and isn’t that the true horror?
Of course, this isn’t the only way to readAnnihilation.This interpretation ofAnnihilationisn’t to shut out other interpretations but to invite more discussion. There’s not a single, “This is the answer. Let’s all go home.” It’s a movie that worms its way into your brain and will continue to haunt you long after The Shimmer fades.
Annihilation
Lena, a biologist and former soldier, joins a mission to uncover what happened to her husband inside Area X – a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Once inside, the expedition discovers a world of mutated landscapes and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.
