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Her military husband Kane ( Oscar Isaac) vanished on a top secret mission, and Lena spends her days weeping silently in her big, empty house, the melancholy sound of Crosby, Stills & Nash's "Helplessly Hoping" flowing from a stereo. A former soldier turned academic, Lena is drifting through her life, now in a haze of grief. Because just like The Shining, even if you don't want to pull the inner workings of Annihilation apart and find out what it all means, you still have, on the surface, a terrifying genre picture.Īt the center of the story is Portman's Lena. And here's the thing: like The Shining, you'll never really find the answer. The same thing will likely be true of Annihilation. Almost 40 years after Stanley Kubrick's The Shining hit theaters, viewers are still dissecting it, finding buried secrets, trying to learn what it all means.
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It is a striking, singular work the type of movie that gets obsessed over, and studied.
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Here is a film that picks apart the minds of its cast of characters the same exact time its picking apart the minds of the audience. It lands somewhere near a lighthouse along a picturesque coast, and what follows is a slow descent into madness. The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, and there's no way to put it back in.Īnnihilation opens with a shot of a meteor crashing to earth. The only thing left behind is the prevailing sense that something has been irrevocably altered. By the time the credits roll, the Shimmer has vanished, leaving little to no answers. Perhaps you'll never really get to the bottom of what's going on in Annihilation because the characters in the film never do either. But in the brief glimpses we see of her fleeing, we witness flowering plants sprouting from the scars on her arms. Director Alex Garland follows after her, but the camera can't quite keep up – Josie is always one step ahead. After Josie speaks of the bear attack, she begins to wander off. The Shimmer has been changing the team ever since they crossed through the border – not just mentally and emotionally, but physically. Now, following the night of the bear attack, the scars are exposed for all to see. For most of the film, the scars on Josie's arms are hidden.
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Josie, we've learned, is covered in self-inflicted scars from a history of cutting herself. Things only get more unsettling from here. The way Thompson delivers this mini-speech, her voice hazy, sounding as if she's winding down, makes the moment unnerving. To die frightened and in pain, and have that as the only part of you which survives. "I suspect that as she was dying, part of her mind became part of the creature that was killing her.It's a terrible thought. I never fulfilled my dream of being an animator or story artist, but now I have the perfect movie to share with my daughter, that embodies so much of my culture and aspirations growing up."It was strange, hearing Sheppard's voice last night," Josie says, almost dreamily. I feel like I just watched Domee bring home the NBA Championship. It’s fucking Lebron returning to Cleveland. One of us actually made it, and did a stint at Pixar as a Story Artist.įor Domee Shi to rise up the ranks of Pixar and get to make the most Chinese Canadian movie you could possibly imagine is beyond any of our wildest dreams. Animation was one of those few creative careers that Asian parents deemed acceptable if their kid was interested in drawing and comics and art. And back in the 90’s, me and my friends grew up dreaming of going to Sheridan College, graduating from their animation program, and working at Disney or Pixar.
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I’m 40, and Chinese Canadian, and grew up outside Toronto.
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