Annihilation
Added 2025-07-19 12:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Blindsight is pretty solid...
Khalayx
2025-07-22 16:29:57 +0000 UTC
Second that!
danzthename
2025-07-22 01:16:17 +0000 UTC
The book is quite different in that regard. The Biologist willingly dissolves herself in the alien matter as she can't get along with humans. And the government is a lot more sinister and conspiratorial.
Andreas Buehler
2025-07-21 12:05:19 +0000 UTC
Uncovered Version is nice and loud. 1:1 I might guess.
LazyBoy Stays Up Late Watchin Video Tapes
2025-07-21 07:32:06 +0000 UTC
Quinn's Ideas is a great youtube channel that covers this along with some of the best sci-fi cosmic horror books available. I highly recommend his channel
CloudseaDjinn
2025-07-20 13:09:59 +0000 UTC
Looove this movie. Thanks for doing this one guys. P.S. has my name dropped off the credits? π
Shikyo
2025-07-20 11:22:06 +0000 UTC
Whomever made this movie was defiantly on LSD the whole time! Imagine combining this movie with Resident Evil and make it a game?
Jayson Phillips
2025-07-20 07:24:28 +0000 UTC
George, read Blindsight - it is hands down the best novel that tackles contact with alien life and how fundamentally different it could evolve into something we cannot comprehend.
Guy Frankenstein
2025-07-20 06:57:48 +0000 UTC
ok this was pretty good.. even though it was not on my list. good to see Valkyrie and Jane Foster teaming up in another movie, and the reaction to "that" scene in particular was great. this movie reminded me a ton of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, The Astronaut's Wife, and Prometheus, though much more cosmically horror influenced than body horror as George said. i honestly thought Natalie Portman was compromised as soon as she kissed Oscar Isaac near the beginning!
Ben Stevens
2025-07-20 06:33:47 +0000 UTC
I found the "Ventress" name rather distracting as it kept making me think of the Star Wars character. I couldn't find any clear origin of the use of that name in this movie, and if it's an homage, it doesn't really work for me at all.
REDR58
2025-07-20 06:30:28 +0000 UTC
I don't have all the answers, but here is my interpretation. The alien/shimmer is just a mirror that "refracts" everything, it doesnt "reflect" but "refract" meaning that it distorts the original image somewhat.
That said, the movie carries the theme of self-destruction, saying that self-destruction is coded in our DNA; it props up topics of cancer and suicide to make the point. But what I interpret is the following: *If* we become aware of our self-destructive tendencies we have the option of pushing through the trauma and becoming someone different or just keep self-destructing.
How I see the characters through this lens, Kane finds out about the affair and jumps in a suicide mission, but he ultimately loves Lena so he comes back a totally different man, one distant and cold. Lena on the other hand destroys her other self (I consider this one to be her cheating side) and goes back to Kane, because she still loves him. The thing is, at the end, they feel like strangers, they are versions of them that move past the issue but will never be the same.
Now, for those that continue self destructing I think the most contrasting pair is Anya and Josie; Anya is an alcoholic, she destructs herself and her environment in violent ways, showcased by how she tries to force everyone to leave and then restrains all the characters, she denies everything she sees no matter how evident it might be and becomes paranoid, ultimately she dies fighting this monster she keeps denying it exists. On the opposite side stands Josie, she has more traditional suicidal tendencies and I see her as someone who jive with the rest of the team, she is more stand-off-ish, more interested in the world than in other people. She accepts her self-destruction and basically commits suicide, merging with the world around her. (I think her turning into a tree/plant might also be a hint on Dante's Divine comedy where those who commit suicide get punished by becoming trees)
So in conclussion, that is MY interpretention, one that is bound to have flaws but the movie put me on this path and that's why I really like it; this doesn't mean that you should accept this theory of mine or that there is a "true" interpretation or even that you have to have one or even like the movie! It's just a window on why someone may enjoy it, it's such a weird film!
Sorry for the extremely long reply, couldn't help myself.
Ignacio Garcia
2025-07-20 06:16:56 +0000 UTC
I love love love this movie, it's one of the best movies to rewatch because on first watch you take things at face value, but when you start seeing it through the lens of metaphor and allegory it becomes an entirely different movie!
Loved the reaction! This might be a movie to re-react in a year from now!
Ignacio Garcia
2025-07-20 05:18:38 +0000 UTC
I do not like the movie. It is beautiful and unusual. Actresses are great. I watched it with pleasure. Even twice.
But I think creators were so occupied with creating stunning ways to deliver the message that they forgot the message itself.
Till that day I do not know what should I understand while watching the movie?
Like always have a spare grenade? Kill the aliens?
If we will take the shimmer as an allegory. As a nature evolving or as a cancer. Okay. But what is the point? Not why shimmer is happening but why I should know about it? Cancer is bad? Nature merges things? You gonna always hold the part of your traumas inside? If so that is terribly simple for such a stunning visual.
Maybe I am too stupid for it I do not know.
But take the Stalker. Basically it is a very similar story. And the movie is deep and message is highly controversial and comes in layers but it is clear. It is about the faith that you need to pursuit the deepest desires of your heart. About the dangers of your wishes. About accepting yourself and your own darings. And well you can get more deep layers in that.
In Annihilation I cannot even get the first level. Mimicking nature should be stopped with grenades?β¨And Iβve read some explanations of the movie I do not find them plausible.
RandomNevermind
2025-07-20 04:09:52 +0000 UTC
I highly recommend that if you enjoyed it, give the books a go, they do a much better job of telling the story and explores much more interesting aspects of Area X and the people studying it.
Ari Ramirez
2025-07-19 22:26:22 +0000 UTC
Of all the sci-fi horror movies about how trauma and grief changes people, this is by far my favorite.
Muir Lyman
2025-07-19 20:59:09 +0000 UTC
So ask someone that has played Mass Effect, the line that I thought of when I first watched this movie after seeing ex machina was.....
"When fire burns, is it in conflict".
Our boy Wong from Dr Strange was, justifiably so, asking the wrong questions.
It didn't arrive with intent. Or even intelligence not in the sense people think. It just happened to the land here. And started to take in and refract everything around it. And continued grow. It wasn't acting out of the malicious intent, don't even know if it has one. It just exists in a different way that we do. On the one hand the things that it could create kind of crazy on the other hand if that refraction bubble could be contained it had the capacity to replicate anything. Absolutely anything.
Garfield is one of my favorite directors. I am really happy he's going to be directing Elden ring. Still haven't played it but I'm getting there. I have a backlog.
Tcrimson05T
2025-07-19 20:56:52 +0000 UTC
Azathoth, lord of all things, is the blind, idiotic supreme Lovecraftian god. This movie has some similarity also - I feel, at least in terms of dread - to the 1979 Soviet SF movie Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, which the the British Film Institute ranked number 29 on its 2012 list of the 100 greatest films of all time.
GAB
2025-07-19 19:41:22 +0000 UTC
The mention about how βthis would be a good game to playβ makes me think of Stalker which itself is inspired by Tarkovskyβs 1979 film of the same name.
Michael
2025-07-19 16:57:17 +0000 UTC
I had a terrible experience when i went to see this in theaters, bunch of teens screaming and laughing throughout, i didn't enjoy it, couldn't understand it, went home pissed.
I then spent a few hours that night reading about the film and what it meant and all of its incredible visual and subtextual symbolism.
Went back the next day to watch it again, now it's one of my favorite films ever :)
Dan Holmes
2025-07-19 16:50:39 +0000 UTC
That's really the point of cosmic horror. It's about terrors from the depths of space happening to us on our terrestrial world.
Adam Vialpando
2025-07-19 16:43:08 +0000 UTC
Simone, one time I was camping in the Florida everglades for two weeks and had mosquito bites ALL OVER my arms and legs and whole body, I counted JUST my arms and had 186 Bites!
Dan Holmes
2025-07-19 16:04:09 +0000 UTC
Fantastic! Alex Garland has a banger filmography!! If you guys enjoyed that, add βMenβ and βCivil Warβ to your next polls. Some craaaazy experiences, more so than Annihilation imo
KyloJames
2025-07-19 15:45:08 +0000 UTC
Sad this movie didn't do as well as it deserved. Still a great piece of scifi.
Jobbe Smit
2025-07-19 14:50:27 +0000 UTC
Also a reminder that Alex Garland will direct the Elden Ring movie, which gives me hope because there's a lot of Cosmic Horror themes/lore in that game. Not sure what the movie will be about, but there's a lot of stories you can turn into a movie there.
Inkpendude
2025-07-19 14:15:30 +0000 UTC
I loved and hated the alien score at the end. When I first saw the movie and I got to the end I could not get that music out of my head.
ShoNuff3000
2025-07-19 14:04:16 +0000 UTC
The Bear thing is one of the most unnerving things I've ever seen.
dudewheresmycar
2025-07-19 14:01:52 +0000 UTC
If you want a really great explanation of this movie, watch this guy explain it. The entire movie is a metaphor. None of it meant to be taken literally. https://youtu.be/URo66iLNEZw?si=P1GmQ8ZKKzrWm3uT
Jlloyd
2025-07-19 14:01:47 +0000 UTC
Cosmic Horror stories are almost never in space
Inkpendude
2025-07-19 13:59:22 +0000 UTC
I love this movie. I notice new details with every re-watch. It's one of the movies, I would have loved to see on the big-screen.
I also enjoy that close to nothing is being explained, leaves so much room for discussion.
I think a good companion movie to this is "Colour out of Space", although George is probably already familiar with the book it's based on.
RobTra
2025-07-19 13:20:54 +0000 UTC
What a wild movie.
I bought the book series a few months ago, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.
The movie certainly goes for a lot of Deep Thoughts throughout its runtime, but I also love the massive sci-fi crossover it gave us apparently completely unintentionally through the character names.
Weβve got (Dr.) Ventress, (Cass) Sheppard, and even a (Josie) Radek.
I kept wondering when the hell weβd get one of their theme songs.
JBK405
2025-07-19 13:16:22 +0000 UTC