franciscosaezzamora If you've ever played S.T.A.L.K.E.R., or read the Strugatski novella, or watched the Tarkovsky film, you'll find plenty of similarities. Namely: the Zone, the Heart of the Zone, the mutants, death as an ordinary companion, and moments of sheer beauty. Yet this movie lacks the pessimism, the fatalism of its Slav counterparts. Ok, that's cultural, but it also fails to explore in depth the "nakedness" that personalities get in such extreme places. Plus, the plot has some severe wholes which do not add suspense, but perpexcity. Some weird decission making process also seems to affect everyone there. And last but not least, I felt that Netflix is trying to pull out all the stops its algorithms provide. Overall, I think is enjoyable, but I can't help to have the feeling that this was a missed opportunity.Btw: the mutant bear was a great and original addition to the mutants catalog. I'm sure we'll see in the future more references to this idea!

Ivan James (lxd-27623) In my honest opinion, I hayed this movie. Maybe it's because I have a huge dislike for chicks in the military, because they are so butch and masculine but let's hope not. I thought everything, from the acting to the so-called cinematography to the non-action, was boring. It's definitely one of my hated for the decade so far.I watched this without reading the original. I was going to at first, but gave up believing that I'll have expectations that are too high or get brainwashed somehow. I didn't want to review this movie as an adaptation, but just a movie.I wish I could go into more detail, but I have nothing more to say. I don't know if I recommend this movie to my liberal enemies or not in general, but give it a try if you are liberal commie diversity fan so your time can be wasted

vistascan-48249 To put it simply, Annihilation is a sci-fi film with an all female cast. Natalie Portman is in the lead as the grieving wife of an army man who vanished a year ago after going on a mission. Herself, a former soldier, she is now a professor of biology at Johns Hopkins. The weirdness begins when her husband shows up at her house with no memory of how he got there, only to inexplicably fall sick. As events unfold, we are told that there is a mysterious area in a certain part of the world called "The Shimmer", which is growing, but anyone sent in to collect information about it never returns. The movie is about the harrowing journey to uncover the mystery of this area as five women, including Lena, head into it. This is a sci-fi movie, and saying more would give away the plot too much.The rest of the cast is made up of Natalie Portman (Lena) ,Jennifer Jason Leigh (Dr. Ventress), Gina Rodriguez (Anya), and Tuva Novotny (Sheppard), all of whom play characters with specialized backgrounds that make them suitable for being involved in this mission, and all of them have their personal reasons to venture into this dangerous area. Portman does a brilliant job in portraying Lena's grief and regrets, and the way she carries on with a steely determination despite it all, hiding her constant vulnerability under a stoic mask.Jennifer Jason Leigh portrays Dr. Ventress with a coldness that evident from the first time she walks into the frame. That coldness and cynical determination is maintained throughout the movie. Dr. Ventress is a character who clearly doesn't have much to care for, and yet her mission is important enough to consume all other priorities. The rest of the cast feels a bit unexplored in a sense. It feels like we should have gotten to know the remaining three members of the team in a much better way that we do, but perhaps this would have been impossible without stretching out the film to unrealistic lengths. We do get hints about all the characters from which we can extrapolate, but that is something left to the viewers. The two men, Oscar Issac (Kane), and David Gyasi (Daniel) are ancillary characters. While they do play their roles effectively, it is a refreshing change to see the female characters be in the forefront in a movie that's not about shoes or weddings. The movie has been called an allegory for depression, grief, loss, and regret. It is indeed, that, but it also feels like a journey into nature, realizing that nature can be in equal parts, both peaceful and terrifying; both beautiful and grotesque. Much like the life of Lena, where she is haunted by the things she had that she lost, and the things she may yet lose, unless she risks everything to preserve them. Throughout the film, this unavoidable fact of her life keeps chasing her just as surely as the threats inside this zone. The film also plays with questions of change and identity, subtly shaking our confidence in the familiar concepts such as our knowledge of ourselves, our knowledge of our motivations and our desires and our ideals, and in the end, the concreteness of our reality.Just as a disclaimers, I should say there are parts in the movie that are beautiful, and parts that are deeply disturbing. This is not a movie children can enjoy. The ending of the film, like many sci-fi films is open to interpretation. It certainly seems like this is by design, as the whole movie is about questions. Questions about paths not taken, things left unsaid, decisions made only to be regretted, identity and constancy, and so on. Annihilation is a moving film wrapped in a beautiful sci-fi package.

pontram Based on the experience watching it, I would have given "Annihilation" 8 or even 9 stars. But based on the many things where this movie fails, I can't give more than six stars. Where it shines: -Fantastic music and scenery -Great Digital effects -Atmosphere, sense of wonder -Full of Tension, good pacing Where it fails: -Lacks any plausibility -Making no sense at all -Completely missing character development For the positive attributes I feel no need to explain them, for the negative the following has to be said. If you want to make a film that lasts in the audience's memory, you have to minimize the amount of "suspension of disbelief". If a movie is entirely constructed to fit the needs of the production and not the needs of the audience, something went wrong. "Annihilition", while utterly beautiful, haunting and fascinating, during its best moments, suffers of very unbelievable premises. Remember, there is an event that is unpreceded in history, and even today it would not be possible to hide a growing anomaly that huge for a year. Further, the idea to send a platoon of armed women into the anomaly, without the possibility to report their sightings directly, is completely ridiculous. Even, or just because there were other teams before, which did not return. Who wants to waste people ? You could keep sending teams, until the alien lifeform consumes a continent, with no success. There should be countless other, much smarter options to get a picture of the situation, but of course we have to follow the dumbest of them for only dramatical purposes. However, on the inside, there are some completely unnecessary violent encounters, which are only there to create fear and a kind of tense that should not have found its way into this movie. I did not take "Annihilation" for an "Alien" or "Predator" horror-action thriller, but more in a "Solaris" or "Stalker" direction. The idea of an experimenting nature, without any other primary purpose or a mindset like ours, is a great one, and executed properly, but only in fragments and in the end. I wonder if the movie wouldn't have benefitted from another thirty minutes of exploration and transformation. So, while everything could have been great with a bit more overthinking, "Annihiliation" only partially succeeds in being impressing. On top of it, it gives us only a bit of a definition for the main charcter, the others are only shadowly persons. In the end, you may feel tricked, as you think you have seen a good movie, that is in truth not such a one.