Annihilation (2018)

Annihilation is a 2018 science fiction horror film written and directed by Alex Garland, based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. It stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny and Oscar Isaac.

The story follows a group of military scientists who enter "The Shimmer", a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating landscapes and transforming creatures.

Plot
At "Area X", a government facility on the southern coast of the US, Lena, a cellular-biology professor and former soldier, is in quarantine. She undergoes a debriefing about a four-month expedition into an anomalous iridescent electromagnetic field dubbed "the Shimmer", of which she and her husband, Kane, are the only survivors. In flashback, Kane, an Army Special Forces soldier, appears in their home after having disappeared on a mission nearly a year ago. He remembers nothing of that time and suddenly falls very ill. A government security force intercepts Kane's ambulance and transports him and Lena to Area X, near where the Shimmer had begun to spread three years earlier.

A psychologist, Dr. Ventress, explains that military teams, including Kane's, have ventured into the Shimmer to attempt to reach the lighthouse where the phenomenon first appeared. Kane is the only person to have ever returned from an expedition. Lena volunteers to join Ventress on a research expedition consisting of two scientists, Josie and Cassie, and a paramedic, Anya. On the expedition, guidance technology fails, the expedition members realize they are unable to remember extended stretches of time, and a mutated crocodile attacks Josie. The team rescues Josie and learns that the crocodile shows signs of being hybridized with a shark. At an abandoned military base, the team discovers evidence of Kane's expedition along with a memory card left for them. A video on the card shows Kane cutting open the stomach of a fellow expedition member while he was still alive, revealing that his intestines have begun to wriggle in a snake-like manner. That night, the base's perimeter fence is torn open, prompting the expedition to investigate. Suddenly, a mutated bear drags Cassie away; the following morning, the team finds one of her boots containing her shorn ankle and foot. Lena searches further, alone, and discovers Cassie's mutilated corpse. As the team continues toward the lighthouse at the center of the Shimmer, they find a decayed settlement with human-shaped plants outside it. Josie says she thinks the Shimmer is acting on organisms in the manner of a prism, distorting and refracting DNA in the same way that a prism refracts light. The expedition members realize they are slowly changing as well.

That night, Anya descends into a psychotic state, attacking and restraining the other team members. As she is threatening them, Anya hears what sounds like Cassie crying for help outside and investigates. The same bear that killed Cassie enters the house, its roar imitating Cassie's screams. It kills Anya and attacks Lena before Josie shoots it dead. Ventress leaves Lena and Josie behind, and sets out to complete the journey while she still can. Josie muses that she doesn't want to continue and begins to grow flowers from her body. She walks away from Lena and disappears among the human-shaped plants.

Lena reaches the lighthouse and goes inside, finding an incinerated corpse, a video-camera, and a hole in the floor. Footage on the camera shows Kane ranting about the Shimmer's effects on him. He urges the cameraman to find Lena, then commits suicide with a white-phosphorus grenade, after which his doppelgänger walks into view. Lena descends into the hole in the floor and finds Ventress, who has also begun to mutate; she disintegrates into a fiery nebulous structure that absorbs a drop of blood from Lena's face and creates a humanoid being. Lena tricks the humanoid, which has been mirroring her movements, into burning itself alive with one of the phosphorus grenades. The blazing being sets the rest of the lighthouse ablaze, and the flames spread to engulf the various other constructs of the Shimmer, causing them to collapse as burning embers and the Shimmer to dissipate into nothingness.

Lena is sent back to Area X, where she is quarantined and debriefed about the Shimmer in front of a battery of observing doctors. Lena surmises that the Shimmer was not necessarily aiming to destroy Earth, but was instead making something new, although Lena was unsure what it was making. She is brought to Kane, who recovered rapidly when the Shimmer ceased to exist. She asks him if he is the "real" Kane, to which he replies, "I don't think so." He asks her if she is Lena, but she does not answer him. Kane's doppelgänger and Lena embrace, and their irises shift colors.

Cast

 * Natalie Portman as Lena
 * Kristen McGarrity as Lena's double
 * Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dr. Ventress
 * Gina Rodriguez as Anya Thorensen
 * Tessa Thompson as Josie Radek
 * Tuva Novotny as Cassie Sheppard
 * Oscar Isaac as Kane
 * Benedict Wong as Lomax
 * Sonoya Mizuno as Katie
 * Mizuno also portrays the humanoid
 * David Gyasi as Daniel

Production
In March 2013, it was announced that Paramount Pictures and Scott Rudin Productions had acquired the film rights to Annihilation, the first novel in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, and that the film would be produced by Scott Rudin and Eli Bush.vAlex Garland was hired to adapt and direct the film the next year.

Writing
Garland revealed to Creative Screenwriting that his adaptation was necessarily based on only the first novel in the trilogy:

Garland's film is "an adaptation which was a memory of the book", rather than book-referenced screenwriting, with the intention of capturing the "dreamlike nature" and tone of his experience reading VanderMeer's novel. Rather than trying to directly adapt the book Garland deliberately took the story in his own direction, with VanderMeer's permission. Garland did not read the other two books when they arrived, as he was concerned he would need to revise his script. Others informed him of the elements of the books, and he expressed surprise at some of the correlations.

Some critics have noted correlations between the film and other science fiction works. Nerdist Industries' Kyle Anderson commented that the film has little to do with the novel that it was based on, and is similar to H. P. Lovecraft's 1927 short story "The Colour Out of Space", about a meteor that lands in a swamp and unleashes a plague. Chris McCoy of the Memphis Flyer also found the film reminiscent of "The Colour Out of Space" as well as the novel Roadside Picnic (1971) and its film adaptation, Stalker (1979).

Filming
Principal photography was underway by April 2016, when actor David Gyasi was added to the cast. Location filming by Lighthouse Pictures Ltd occurred starting in late April in South Forest, Windsor Great Park. Some test shooting had already been done in St. Marks, Florida, but the vegetation in the area turned out to be too dense to give any depth perception on screen. On May 9, 2016, cinematographer Rob Hardy began sharing pictures from the set of the film. On July 13 and 14, filming took place at Holkham Pines in North Norfolk. Shooting was completed that month.

The visual effect team was made up of many of Garland's collaborators from his previous film, Ex Machina, including VFX Supervisor Andrew Whitehurst, lead VFX house Double Negative and Milk VFX, plus special makeup effects by Tristan Versluis.