Film Road to Halloween: Annihilation (2018)

The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 76 days to go.

There are, without a doubt, cerebrally grizzly images abound within Alex Garland’s fever dream, Annihilation. From a gut crawling with worms, apex predators transforming into monstrous beasts, and a demonic, grieving bear that howls with the terrified screams of its victims last gasps, Annihilation refuses to limit itself simply to visual terrors and is all the more horrific because of it.

Where some of us more queasy filmgoers in the past might be able to simply close our eyes when a scene becomes too nasty, Garland requires us to feel the fraught, hopeless pain of his victims. Building tension that earths its way under your skin, by utilizing sound so unnerving that even when your lids close as a woman is dragged away, you’re still forced to internalize the trauma.

Stripped down to its most conventional skeletons, there’s an argument to be made that – on paper and entirely 2D – Garland’s film skews more science fiction than horror. It takes the breathing of life into the story, visuals into the words, that makes for a film that is so enticingly jarring and abrasively unsettling.

“Garland requires us to feel the fraught, hopeless pain of his victims.”

Plenty of movies have used similar approaches to try and unbalance the viewer, whether through means of introducing monsters far into the film, group paranoia or alien dopplegangers. But few have allowed their audience to feel so wholly submerged in its entirety, that we are forced to give over all of our emotions to the hands of the filmmakers.

So much of horror – like comedy – is built on the anticipation for either punchlines, jump scares, or often both. What Annihilation accomplishes is making the viewers revel and balk at the in-between moment. Because the characters are so truly formed and fleshed out that their inner pain that is refracted by this mysterious dome of energy is ours to absorb as well.

Annihilation is built on the back of trauma – the forced reclusion that comes hand in hand with depression, a self-sabotaging instinct that allows us to put ourselves into increasingly precarious situations. Every main character that undergoes the journey through “The Shimmer” is carrying immeasurable loads of emotional baggage. Making for some of the most fascinating and devastating characters (particularly in sci-fi) in ages.

It’s no surprise now that the thematic value of horror often lies outside of the gore and guts of it all (not a discredit as that specific sub-genre has its fans too,). And Annihilation further explores the idea of allowing a larger scale concept – trauma and mental illness – to fully engulf the mood of the film.

“These women are all representations of depression, apathy and grief and all its messiness.”

From Lena’s (Natalie Portman) self-hatred that leads her on a journey of true enlightenment, to Anna (Gina Rodriguez) and Cass’s (Tuva Novotny) inability to move past their own singular grief manifested into a yowling beast. Or Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh,) a woman with a death wish the second she is given a death sentence, and, in particular, Josie (Tess Thompson) who battled with depression and suicidal ideologies and in the end comes out the other side born anew. These women are all representations of depression, apathy and grief and all its messiness.

The imagery of the film is shocking, yes, but that isn’t what latches onto the viewer once the film has ended. Instead, it’s that viscal turmoil each encounters, battles and, in the case of many, succumb to. As Lena faces off with an alien like figure that has her uncanny resemblance, it isn’t difficult to remember what it’s like to face off with yourself when you’ve fallen to your lowest.

Horror, in the case of Garland and Annihilation isn’t derivative of external hurt but, rather, how internal pain can manifest itself into something tangible, fearsome and constantly changing to fit the host body. Be it a shimmering snow globe that disorients inhabitants, mutilated bodies that nauseate, or eerie self-reflections that embody your greatest threat. Annihilation startles because it tackles those fears with empathetic humanism, rather than simply cheap thrills.