Annihilation

          

          Annihilation is a film about a biology professor at John Hopkins who is sent to explore a mysterious phenomenon known as The Shimmer along with a group of 4 other women. They are sent into The Shimmer to find the center and see what has caused all the phenomena and collect samples. As they venture further, unexplainable things start to happen and the team must endure the mental hardship that comes with the dangerous mission.

          This is, without a doubt, my favorite film of the year so far. I sat in the theater until the credits were done and the cleaning crew had arrived. When I walked into the lobby, I saw that groups of people had stuck around and when I walked closer, I heard them talking about the movie. They were deep in discussion as they talked about their own theories and ideas and I wanted to join, but I had to solidify my own ideas first. That's one thing I loved about this movie: the openness to interpretation. I love it when a movie can elicit discussion and debate and this film does that thanks to its ambiguity. I've never seen people stay in the theater lobby to talk about a movie before. It was cool to see. Honestly, that's all I can really say about the movie. I don't want to be vague, but I'm going to keep it like that to avoid spoiling anything. 

          All the actors are amazing. Natalie Portman is great as usual and so are the other supporting actresses. Oscar Issac is great as well. My advice would be to ignore the trailers. Go into it with little knowledge. You'll be surprised, I'm sure of it. Great directing work from Alex Garland as well. I haven't seen his previous film Ex Machina, but I'm sure I'll check it out sometime in the future

          The only thing I didn't really like about the film was one of the characters. I won't say which one, but I found this character's tone choice to be a bit unreasonably monotonous at times

          Overall, this movie is one of the best films of the year so far with great performances and a boatload of stuff to think about after the credits have rolled. If you are into cerebral-type movies or if you're just a casual movie-goer, you definitely won't want to miss this one. 9.8/10