Something crash lands into a lighthouse located in the United States. A strange phenomenon begins to emanate from the landing site, a sort of bubble or force field. The US government quickly moves in and quarantines the area. Luckily, the site is easy to keep secret as it’s in a rather remote and unpopulated area. The bubble, deemed The Shimmer, proves to be impossible to research because anything sent in never comes out, even data transmissions. It’s a total mystery as to what’s in or going on in there. The Shimmer is expanding and when a military team disappears inside, the government becomes very worried that time is running out. Then, a year after the last human expedition went into The Shimmer, one of the men appears at his home, greeting his wife, Lena, who thought he was dead. His mission was a total secret, he never told her where he was going and she never got an answer from his superiors. He immediately becomes ill and during the trip to the hospital, the ambulance is pulled over by armed guards and Lena wakes up isolated in some kind of facility. It is here where she finds out about the threat and she volunteers to go into The Shimmer with four other female scientists in a final effort to solve the mystery.

The terrific Alex Garland directed and adapted the book of the same name into this wild ride which I consider one of the genre’s best. Despite the large premise of the story, Annihilation has its eyes focused on relationships.

This movie is cool in many ways. It’s an alien invasion movie but it’s not. It’s an action movie and it’s not. It’s just as beautiful as it is horrific. Anchored by Natalie Portman, the cast is very strong. Movies led by an all female cast are pretty rare still, especially one where they are in a high stakes military mission so this changes the perspective quite a bit.

I felt like the pacing was pretty much perfect as just enough info is given at the start and by going with the women into the unknown, picking up on the trail from the doomed team before them, makes all of their discoveries and battles taught and intriguing. Why is Lena doing this, why are any of them going in there when they know the odds are so stacked against them? That’s part of the journey. The other is what’s at the lighthouse? Both are tough questions to answer in new and interesting ways and the answers shown are the biggest reasons why I liked this so much.

Aside from the story, Annihilation is a visual feast. Inside The Shimmer, our world is changing. It’s subtle at first, little things are different and then the mutations get bigger and more extreme. There’s a really cool visual design throughout that’s hard to describe. It’s like nature being deconstructed and reconstructed, familiar and foreign at the same time. Many times it looks like a painting come to life.

This movie is a real head trip so I’m hesitant to give many details up. It’s important to see each element presented in the order the movie shows you. And a lot of is a surprise so that’s half of the fun. It all stacks up to create a thought-provoking sci-fi movie with a great ending. We don’t get many of those.