1. Based on bestselling Southern Region Trilogy books by Jeff Vandermeers, Annihilation is a sci fi – thriller movie about a biologist who enters into The Shimmer, a strange alien plasm that is expanding and changing the area it covers, with four other woman to learn about the cause to The Shimmer. The film features Natalie Portman as Lena, the biologist and main protagonist, that goes into The Shimmer after her husband comes home sick from the journey and in a crucial state. In the The Shimmer, Lena discovers The Shimmer is mutating everything in The Shimmer and making everything it’s own. As the five woman travel through The Shimmer, they have to deal with new creatures that could kill them, fear of mutating into something terrible, and survive from each other. The movie is rated R and is set to release on February 23rd.

Warning; spoilers ahead.

Going into this movie, without much knowledge of it, the movie was unexpectedly great. Compare to other sci fi movies where it’s a basic plot of an alien getting onto the ship and killing everyone, the movie brought materials from space that lead to mutations on Earth and created an interesting story. The movie had unexpected turns and was a rollercoaster. The movie had horrifying parts, such as when Kane cut open one of the soldiers stomach to show the soldiers moving insides. Then there were parts where it left everyone in the movie theater on the edge of their seats, such as when the bear creature came in and the three women were tied up because one of the woman lost her mind and couldn’t trust Lena for keeping the secret of being married to Kane was nerve-racking. The movie always kept my eyes watching every small detail and left me astounded.

There were parts where the movie was confusing due to the part of Lena having an affair and she thought that Kane somehow knows about it was an odd detail to add and made it seemed like Kane went into The Shimmer because he was upset about the affair, which is a stupid reason to volunteer to go into The Shimmer, and the whole concept of this world where everything is one is confusing to wrap around, but I generally enjoyed it. It was exciting, made me jump out of my seat, and was unlike any scifi – thriller movie that I’ve seen in a while.

Annihilation also felt like a dream and it was a vivid but weird dream. From the glass trees to the deers with branches to the Lena clone that looked like a green, glassy statue, it was incredible. It was so vivid and imaginative that it was a completely different world from Earth, but it was still on Earth. The visionary direction for this movie was amazing and created a beautiful, scary, and interesting world.

I enjoyed the movie and it was exciting, and if you want to watch a scifi movie that is different and imaginative, than Annihilation is the perfect movie.