Alex Garland, the keen eye behind Ex Machina, is traversing complex science-fiction waters once again with Annihilation. The film is based on the first of Jeff VanderMeer’s “Southern Reach” Trilogy of books, and this trailer is probably the best thing you’ll see all day.
Check this out, and be amazed:
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Here is an extensive synopsis of the book to give you an idea of what you’re dealing with. Garland’s film will probably be a bit different:
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy,
we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers―they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding―but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.
This looks pretty damn amazing any way you slice it. Natalie Portman is just the tip of the iceberg with this cast: Oscar Isaac, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson.
Annihilation will be here February 23 next year. Plan accordingly.
