Annihilation

What does the alien want? Although it mirrors Natalie Portman’s actions and appears to commit suicide, the final scene reveals that actually, it doesn’t share Portman’s suicidal urges. In its own weird way, it saves her marriage.

The alien’s modus operandi is ‘refraction’ – the scrambling of reality to create new forms. It is creative whereas the humans in the film are (self)destructive. We may experience these effects as annihilation, but from the alien’s perspective it is exactly the opposite.

It’s hardly a comforting thought to assume the point of view of a cancer, which is why this film lacks the charge of Garland’s Ex Machina, where male power was overturned by a sympathetic ‘alien’ female. Here the alien may just represent Eros defeating humanity’s Thanatos – the (supposedly) impulsive way Portman’s sabotages her marriage being replaced with the will to save it. It doesn’t quite work because the marriage feels unreal to begin with, and ‘impulse’ is not a great explanation for Portman’s infidelity.

Garland has done better before. In its structure Annihilation is similar to the Garland-penned, Danny Boyle-directed Sunshine, where the characters spent less time explaining who they were, and their cabin fever environment made better sense of their descent into madness. There are some shudder-inducing moments in Annihilation, as well as a few beautiful sequences, but nothing that compares to the thrill-ride of Sunshine’s final 30 minutes. That it went straight to Netflix in Europe is somehow fitting – it’s not as good as Garland’s previous work would suggest it should be.

Ex Machina

Another ironic retelling of the Fall myth, maybe not from the title down this time. 'Ex machina' is a bit of a red herring, since there's no out-of-nowhere resolution to the plot. Nor is there a preoccupation with the presence or absence of a divinity imposing order on the world. Rather, the film is about the struggle between a Frankenstein-type creator and his creation, a well-worn dynamic here given a unique gendered twist.

Nathan is the troubled genius who wants to play God. He invites Caleb into his manicured Garden of Eden and sets up an elaborate temptation in order to test his creation Eva. If Eva manages to manipulate Caleb into helping her escape, she would pass the 'Turing Test' and be considered a true AI. During the course of the film we learn that Eva is the latest in a number of models which have served Nathan (at least in part) as slaves. The film is partly about the way women are 'created' by men, programmed to perform and conform to male desires. Which makes the film's ending all the more troubling from the perspective of the patriarchy. Eva escapes from Nathan, but she also escapes from the innocent and good-hearted Caleb, who she was designed for. She's charmed both him and us, but she has done this for no one's benefit but her own. She is not only self-aware, but independent.

It may be worth comparing this to Under The Skin, where Scarlett Johansson plays an alien forced to seduce Glaswegians at the command of fierce male motorcyclists. While she preys on other men, she is always prey herself. In Ex Machina the AI escapes the dominion of her creator and the man she has been created for – Eve is free from both God and Adam. Difficult to escape the conclusion that while it's a more straightforward genre film in some respects, it's the more confrontational and difficult.

It is, I should say, a very effective thriller. The CGI is a muted presence, and the film is largely about three actors on a couple of sets trying to get the audience to second guess their characters' intentions. The tension is tightened largely through the forceful presence of Oscar Isaac's glowering turn as Nathan, and the doe-eyed innocence of Alicia Vikander and Domhnall Gleeson who seem caught in a labyrinth with a Minotaur. I thought it was cold in the auditorium I was in, and ended up wrapping myself in my jacket, but tbh I think that was just the effect of the film's icy and uncertain atmosphere.