The Annihilation trailer is 95% characters walking and staring upwards in awe, and it’s still absolutely spine-shaking. The film spawns from Jeff VanderMeer’s Nebula Award-winning novel about a group of scientists who hack their way through a mysterious, uninhabited area filled with dangerous creatures. The adaptation is written and directed by Alex Garland, who proved himself more than worthy of bigthink sci-fi when he trapped us inside a ridiculously expensive smart home with Ex Machina.
In this strange trip, Natalie Portman plays a biologist whose husband (Oscar Isaac) had disappeared on a previous expedition and who now lends her expertise and emotional connection to a journey with a psychologist (Jennifer Jason Leigh), an anthropologist (Gina Rodriguez), and a surveyor (Tessa Thompson).
Here’s the thing. Tessa Thompson makes everything better. Jennifer Jason Leigh makes everything better. Oscar Isaac makes everything better. Gina Rodriguez makes everything better. And this movie has all of them. If they added Oliver Platt and Helen Mirren to the mix, the movie screen might explode.
Even from this brief teaser, it looks incredible. Where claustrophobia was Garland’s best friend in Ex Machina, it looks like agoraphobia and the alien ant farm will do wonders to set us off balance in Annihilation (whose title does not bode well for us or for the adventurers).
It may seem strange, but another comforting fact about the film is that, in spite of the novel’s status as the first in a trilogy, the book sequels are so young that Garland didn’t give any consideration to them when writing the script for Annihilation. Thus, it’s a rare movie, already set up for franchise possibilities that won’t be tempted whatsoever to stumble over itself to help launch the second book into filmdom. Which is great. A little focus can go a long way.
So the only big question left: Why isn’t this movie in everyone’s eyeballs right now? Why do we have to wait until February 23, 2018?!
Image: Paramount Pictures
