I watched **Annihilation** on Saturday after being pretty excited to watch the movie for the past couple weeks as it was coming from Alex Garland, the director of the fabulous **Ex Machina**. I'm not going to lie though, I was a little bit disappointed in the end. Not because the movie was not good by any means. It was actually a very well done film with stunning visuals and art direction. It's just that I felt like it had the potential to be a "great" movie, and just fell a bit short in the last quarter/third of the movie or so.

I think that opinions on the ending sequence has varied quite a bit. Some people love it and have raved about it. I, on the other hand, felt that it was a just a tiny bit lacking and while visually stunning, not super original or "groundbreaking". I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't connect as well with the final quarter of the movie though (if that makes sense) without spoiling some major parts of the film.

While the movie is based on a trilogy of books (I've heard that it diverges quite far from the books though), the film borrows heavily from Tarkovsky's **Stalker** (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). The influence is noticeable throughout, not just from both movies having a Shimmer/Zone. If you're a fan of Stalker (1979), I'd definitely recommend checking Annihilation out.

As I mentioned before, the visuals were stunning, and I thought that the set pieces and scenarios that evolved over the first 2/3 of the film were very well done. I liked the balance of the film being a thriller (both physically and psychologically), while adding lots of thinking points and contemplative questions of "who we really are", "what is actual destruction", just to name a few. The cast was well done for the most part, albeit I wish that the characters other than Natalie Portman's protagonist could have been developed a bit more.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie and thought it was a grand visual experience. I was just disappointed a bit perhaps because I was expecting a bit too much coming in, and from what the first 2/3's of the movie set up. Also of note, the trailer definitely markets this film as something like a female Rambo/Predator action flick, which it really isn't. In the end, I think that I would give the movie a solid 7.5/10.

I thought Ex Machina was (although flawed) an excellent movie, Annihilation was just crap though. Apart from the outfits, there was nothing even remotely military about any of them, the whole thing just didn't know where it was going or why, it was a huge confused mess. It probably would have made a good TV episode in an anthology show, but just not enough there to make a decent film. It put me in mind of Arrival (easily the worst sci-fi movie of recent times), low-brow junk masquerading as high-brow gold. Both were designed from the ground up to make stupid people think they are really smart. If a film is advertised as 'highly intelligent' they should at least be moderately intelligent, but this doesn't even come close. The fact the ending is somewhat ambiguous and there are several different theories about it doesn't mean the film is cleaver, it just means the ending has more than one interpretation. I'm not saying films should spoon feed you all the answers, in fact, I hate when that happens, It's great being able to contemplate a movie and it's meanings after the fact, the problem here is it gives you so little of worth to actually think about.

It helps to have an open mind and just let yourself go with the flow of the story ... most plot elements align about half-way through the film. Meanwhile just lean back and enjoy the outstanding visual effects, cinematography and sound design. And it has a few very disturbing/creepy scenes that may be tough for some.

What does it look like to inferior human beings when an advanced alien race begins terraforming our planet right out from under us? This. This is what it looks like. 6/10.

Critics are by and large on board with _Annihilation_. Audiences however have been more split. Even the people I know personally are coming out strongly either for or against it. Normally, those are the kind of movies that I find myself feeling in the middle about. You know, the movies that people say "You either love it or you hate it, there is no middle ground!"? Yeah, those are the sort of thing I almost always end up giving a five or six out of ten. But with this one? I fall very, very firmly on the side in favour of _Annihilation_. I did **love** it.

Aesthetics is a big part of that, I'm not gonna lie. I'm also digging the chimeric creature design I've seen on Netflix so far this year (in both this and _The Ritual_). But the philosophical stuff is what really does it for me. Annihilation approaches its context in a completely original way, and I for one feel richer for having seen it.

_Final rating:★★★★ - Very strong appeal. A personal favourite._