Annihilation

Locations
Call Number: Blu-ray Science-Fiction Annihilation
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch

Originally released as a motion picture in 2018.
Based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer.
Wide screen.
Special features: Part 1. Southern Reach - Refractions: story origins, For those that follow: casting Annihilation; Part 2. Area X - Shimmer: shooting on location, Vanished into havoc: visual and special effects; Part 3. To the lighthouse - Unfathomable mind, The last phase.
Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, Oscar Isaac.
Biologist and former soldier Lena is shocked when her missing husband comes home near death from a top-secret mission into The Shimmer, a mysterious quarantine zone from which no one has ever returned. Now, Lena and her elite team must enter a beautiful, deadly world of mutated landscapes and creatures, to discover how to stop the growing phenomenon that threatens all life on Earth.
Blu-ray, wide screen; Dolby Atmos (English), Dolby digital 5.1 (French, Spanish); 1080p high definition; requires Blu-ray player.
Contents: Annihilation.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Good on its own submitted by ADunn on August 10, 2018, 3:39pm If this was titled anything other than Annihilation, I would have liked it a lot more. Comparing it to the book is hard because it really only shares the basic premise. I do appreciate the book for what it is and the fact that it tries to answer some questions the book(s) don't.

Fantastically Surreal submitted by lstorc on August 26, 2018, 2:43pm This was visually stunning and projected a mildly dissociative narrative that worked with-it serialism.

unusual submitted by JulieCraig on November 12, 2018, 6:12pm Natalie Portman is good as a woman finding out her husband is still alive after a year missing. She is also a scientist and the movie leads into a creepy science fiction premise. Genetically modified animals are very interesting. Not for everyone. Great visuals.

Better than the book, but far from perfect submitted by Will O on August 26, 2020, 10:19am Really wanted to like this more since it has Tessa Thompson, one of my favorite actors out there and Natalie Portman who is solidly good in most things as well as a mostly female lead cast which is too rare.
I will say the movie is much better than the book but I also wasn't very hot on the book.
The horror elements were great and I wish it had leaned a little more in that direction especially with the bear-thing and the "help me" chair scene being so damn scary but it just turned into a "whoo aliens, ambiguous ending" movie.
Instead of going full horror or full aliens from the beginning it also had a bunch of psycho babble which was just dropped in the last third.
Good movie, great cast but was missing some cohesion between the psychological aspects from the first two thirds and the horror alien last two thirds which overlapped but didn't add up for me.