I just realized how much fun it would be to go to a movie like Black Panther or Annihilation with another QT3’er. Fun!
Yeah, pretty much the same for me. I imagine there’s a ton of subtext and symbolism that I just didn’t get, but I found it slow and boring. Not much there, there.
This is one of those movies I felt like I needed to drop some acid so I could understand the ending.
Apocalypse Now meets 2001.
They should have hired you to do the marketing!
Natalie Portman has Resting Acting-As-Hard-As-She-Can Face, and this isn’t going to be the movie to bring me around on her.
I didn’t like it as much as Ex Machina, but I still enjoyed the experience of seeing it without knowing much about it, and I always want to support weird sci-fi.
An acquaintance said on FB last night- “the first 2/3 of Annihilation were the perfect sci-fi/horror movie I always wanted. The last third was the perfect sci-fi/horror movie someone who liked Twin Peaks: The Return always wanted”.
I admit, I’m intrigued.
That… that… that’s actually a perfect description of the books. So maybe they did it! They built the ideal movie adaptation.
She does have a way with words, that one (a local playwright). I was intrigued before, she just cemented it with that line.
Her face does look like clay sometimes.
Saw it. First 2/3 were pretty good, but it doesn’t stick the landing. Still not quite sure of the last scene.
I was just in my local bookstore and saw the full set of books so I bought them on impulse. They sound up my alley and also more interesting than the movie. Probably I’ll catch this down the road.
The book series was divisive among my sci-fi loving friends. Some loved the first one though I found it massively dull. Even many who liked the first weren’t fans of the follow-ones.
Diego
That pretty much nails it for me. Loved the Solaris vibes it was putting off, and I actually wouldn’t have minded if it had been thirty minutes longer and spent more time lingering with the visuals. The ending was, if not a letdown, then at least one of the less interesting paths it could have gone down for me.
I bet this would have been very fun to watch with a QT3er! Would LOVE to hear an -opsis of it by Kelly Wand!
@Menzo, yep. I kepy thinking that it was going to get exciting. One scene reminded me of the original Tomb Raider. :P
I loved the bear scene. Scary, disturbing, gory, horrific. The rest of the movie not so much.
-Tom
I really, really, really liked this one. But man, I wish I’d have been able to see it on the big screen. Those visuals deserved it.
I didn’t love this as much as Ex Machina, but found it engrossing nevertheless. I agree with the poster that said that the first 2/3 were probably some of the best horror-sci/fi in recent times. Clever, deliberate, with an understated but creeping crescendo of weirdness (personally, I would have gone further and excised the framing interrogation scenes).
If anything, Garland knows how to do alien, which is part of what I adored Ex Machina (or Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, a movie that shares quite a few tonal/pacing/aural traits with Annihilation).
Alien means not necessarily purposeful –which, to our goal-driven minds, is an automatically disquieting concept–, but not utterly bonkers for the hell of it either, just skilfully treading that finest line between the ordinary and the bizarre-- the whole thing was dripping with a subtle and inescapable quality that to me ranks among the best attempts ever to put a nightmare to the screen.
I think the movie does disappoint in its third act, with visuals being pushed to the front a bit too much in lieu of narrative, enough to make me draw uncomfortable mental comparisons with 2001 or, worst of all, Tarsem Singh. It was also frustrating that some threads seemed to go nowhere. Definitely not for everyone, but that middle section is stellar. I wonder what Garland could do with Lovecraft.
Although I’m not sure I fully understand the point of the last scene, I found the movie fucked up, deep and meaningful. Considering what’s happening in my life I can’t stop thinking about it. But then I read the first book… it was not fucked up enough, shallow and meaningless. More over, I found the Tower and the Crawler concepts extremely dull and disappointing. Trying to decide if I should read other books or not.
Yeah, original Tomb Raider comes to mind immediately.
P.S: by the way, I was quite surprised to learn that the most important sequence of the movie featured pre-existing track right in the middle of it:
Moderat - The Mark (Interlude)