The talking bear was one of the most unsettling scenes iv seen in a movie since Under The Skin

SPOILER Regarding the bear with the woman’s screams. When Lena finds her corpse her neck is ripped open and assumably eaten vs everything else so I think her voice box/vocal cords melded with the bears DNA after it bit and/or ate that part of her.

I'm pretty sure that Gina Rodriguez's character had that tattoo on her arm and when Natalie Portman comes out with the same tattoo it suggests that the refracting and mixing of DNA resulted in her taking on aspects of everyone and everything in the shimmer.

can we talk about how incredible it is that Garland has made a perfectly passive antagonist! The nature of the shimmer refracts and blends its environment, but the being in the lighthouse does nothing but the same - it copies. The figure doesn't go outside and hunt them down, it just exists there (it doesn't even take a human form until it has one to copy). It is nature itself that is the aggressor, both in the cases of the animals, and the self-destructive tendencies of the team.

Good catch Christy. I kept asking myself “Isn’t that their house?” but I wasn’t sure if I had imagined it.

Natalie's alien double is the one telling the story and what we see is based on it's description of the events. The alien double changes the ending to hide what it is and wants to take her place. Natalie's character died in the lighthouse.

You have to completely ignore the movie to not get Portman survives the Shimmer. Issac's doppelganger not only can't answer Portman's basic questions about what he has been up to but he also refers to the bedroom as "the room with the bed." I think the movie makes it pretty clear the doppleganger has inherited a lot of memory, language, etc from Issac but is not comfortable using it and doesn't get idiomatic stuff. And they don't show Portman habing those same difficulties.

*Refraction* Lena (played by Portman) got the tattoo from Anya (Rodriguez) and a similar thing happens with Kane (Isaac) as his accent gradually changes ...something he probably acquired from one (or more) of his teammates

I noticed when Portman's character goes into the house inside the Shimmer, there's a moment by the stairs where it seems like she notices that the stairs/house are similar if not identical to hers. For some reason, there was a definite moment where she takes in the fact that she's in the house. Also, I think it was the original Portman that made it out but at first, I thought maybe the alien absorbed parts of her mental structure (not just physical) and adapted her tendency to lie. They set up that she's a lier throughout the movie. So I wondered if maybe it was the alien being interrogated and that it lied to cover it's identity by changing how the final moments in the lighthouse went down, lying to the viewer as well. It hypnotized Portman into killing herself and then left once it learned enough about Earth biology and whether or not it wanted to continue changing the Earth. I thought it would be a fun twist if it actually won and just lied about it so it could be with its mate (the Issacs clone).

Also this movie had the South Park Man-Bear-Pig

I love how the movie was able to make something as ordinary (to us) as life seem so uncanny, and to do this simply by speeding up its rate of growth, relative to selection. It shows us life in the raw--all blind proliferation and assimilation--without the filter of natural selection to lend it the illusion of order and harmony. This is, of course, precisely how cancer behaves, but we see other examples in phenomena like "driving y chromosome," which can can skew a population's sex ratio entirely male in a short period of time, resulting in a short-term "benefit" to the y chromosome (more copies of it being made per generation), but ultimately extinction. It's the blindness of these processes that gives them the appearance of being willfully self-destructive. Cancer cells don't know that by endangering the life of their host they are endangering themselves. Similarly, Lena isn't thinking about the wellbeing of her marriage, the greater whole of which she is a part, when she decides to embark on her affair; she's just acting in her own short term interest. We live in an entropic universe, meaning that there are many more ways of making it more disordered than of making it more ordered. Annihilation is not the exception, but the rule. It takes a lot of luck, time, or care to build structures that last.

I also noticed that it was their house right away. What really creeped me out, because I only remembered it later: Kane (the original we see in the flashbacks) has a bear tattooed on his chest.

Love this, please continue to do analysis for non-blockbuster films in the future!!

I want to see this one again. I just hope it's still playing next week

I love the female characters in this movie. They are strong yet feminine, smart and intuitive, emotionally vulnerable yet brave. These characters are far more realistic than many other female roles you see in films and on shows.

Each person that goes into the shimmer is self destructive in someway. Each one must confront their self destructive behavior. Two of them are killed, but two of them accept their fate and are changed forever. Natalie Portman's character is also self-destructive. We know this because of the scene where she is having sex with her colleague, and he mentions that she can't forgive herself. And she knows this is true. When her husband leaves for this mission a day early, he knows the truth, that she has been having an affair. He loves her, but doesn't know how to deal with it, and so he goes into the shimmer. In the scene where he is talking to his double and decides that he doesn't know which is the real person, he has given up, and thus accepts his fate. Natalie Portman when confronting her double, has something to go back for, she has someone to return to, a reason to leave the shimmer. So when the double begins to copy her, she takes the grenade, and allows it to copy that part of her--the self destructive part--and then leaves. The copy then takes the newly acquired self-destructive nature and promptly destroys everything, including itself. Originally I didn't understand the title because annihilation only happens when two things destroy each other. Upon reflection of what actually happens in the film, I realized that ultimately it made sense, in that moment when the copy does in fact destroy itself, and the part of Portman it has acquired, the way it destroyed Jennifer Jason Leigh's character. Many people get stuck on the fact that when the shimmer is destroyed, it seemingly destroys everything inside, but Portman's character is able to leave, her husband/copy is just fine, and the reason for this is simple. Of all those who entered the shimmer, these two characters wanted to leave, had a reason to be something outside of the shimmer, thus when it was destroyed, whatever created the changes between the two of them died, however the changes were already made, which we know because both had the glowing eyes. The other thing people get hung up on is, the notion that there must be some point to it. And to that I say, there is. Whatever crashed at the lighthouse wasn't sure what it wanted. First we knows this because as the shimmer expands you see in an outward going in fashion that things are slightly changed, but as you go deeper, toward its singularity, whatever was in the center, you find things to be far more complex and more deeply affected. Much like the division of cells to take what is simple and create something complex. That means when the shimmer was at its finest point in the beginning like an experiment, things were minutely changed, as the simple move further outward, replaced with more complex structures the shimmer gets larger and larger. Like the ripple in a pond. We can guess that people entering the shimmer heading toward the lighthouse gave this thing an opportunity to work with their DNA, and that by the time Portman's husband reaches the lighthouse, his mind has been too far altered, that he is too far gone, a mistake that the next copy is unlikely to make with her. In the scene before her copy comes into being, Jennifer Jason Leigh's character describe the destruction necessary to create life, and that is what we see. Whatever this thing is, it has been destroying things, and making new things all in an attempt to understand. The real Lena does leave, and the copy is destroyed, however, forever changed, to the point that she might not know how much of her remains and how much is part of that thing, the same can be said of her husband who might technically be more that thing, than her husband.

The scene where the Biologist is looking into the mimic is mindblowing.

The "bear" was one of the most terrifying and fascinating creatures I have ever seen on film. It stunned me.

The tattoo was one of the details I liked about this movie. The paramedic Anya had it on her arm, then when Natalie's character was on the boat she complains about a bruise on her arm and thinks it come from the alligator even though it never touched her, and then she has the tattoo. I sort of liked she never mentioned it, it was as if she never realized the tattoo wasn't hers.

The guy that was torn apart by the "worms" in his stomach had the tattoo. Natalie Portman's character touched it.

Christy's right. It's the same house because the way the camera framed the staircase was exactly the same.

The "alien" lena survived. It was the second iteration of "mimicry" where the alien finally learned what it took to survive outside area x (comeplete with memory - drinking the water did not have adverse effect) and also having TWO of them to be able to reproduce unnoticed. The second time lena wakes up from the slumber with the mimic, the switch already happened. you could see from the "steps" they were taking right before the "alien" picked up the grenade...knowing the real Lena would want to be with her husband, the alien handed the grenade to Lena (annihilation) and after it exploded you could see how Lena touches/burns her husband first and then the contamination around her. Why would the doppleganger alien do this? why would it try to "burn" the other contamination essentially destroying the entirety of the shimmer? It was the final sacrifice of Lena even though she knew the alien would get away, destroying the shimmer will give humans some time to figure out what is happening or about to happen. Yes, the aliens are alive in two human bodies, but it will take a longer time to spread than what the shimmer was doing.

it's not just DNA that gets "changed" in the shimmer. Thoughts or memories get duplicated---like Lena's house being in the shimmer, etc. Also parts of others get mixed in with other people----Kane gets a southern accent (in his video with his clone), the tattoo from the guy with the swirling intestines ends up on the EMT woman and on Lena. So DNA gets "changed", thoughts/memories are made physical and people get parts of others incorporated into themselves.

The extraterrestrial species was experimenting with the shimmer. With all of the other people, it had failed they were all self destructive, hence the focus on this theme in the movie. With Lena, it was able to successfully get the mutation into a person that was strong enough to make it out and thus take the mutation with it. There was no longer a need for the shimmer so when Lena set the duplicate on fire, it extinguished the rest of the lighthouse. She is still Lena but she also has parts of the other characters and the extraterrestrial in her. She's the same but different. Maybe it's the evolution of humans.

The shot with the opening of the shark alligator thing, I took it as a straight take from Jaws, when they show the dead shark’s bloody mouth being pried open

Saw this yesterday, the commercials and trailers didn't do it justice, I look forward to seeing it again. Great cerebral sci-fi!!!

What did you guys think about the Dr. in the lighthouse. At first, her eyes are non existent when she is mumbling to herself, but then her eyes develop before she implodes and turns into that bright yellow "black hole"? wtf happened to her orignal? do we assume she was cloned and then just died mumbling to herself and that is why the alien version was found doing the same?

It was undoubtedly "real" Lena that came back. When she lights the phosphorus grenade, the flesh burns away and you can clearly see that it's the other being.

He asks her at the end if she's Lena and she doesn't answer, then they hug and her eyes shimmer like his does... Whether she's the clone or not she's definitely not herself anymore...

is it a problem on my end, or do some the WTFlick vids have different audio volumes?! its a bit annoying

I think the doppleganger got out, because remember the whole story is being told, by the Lena in the chair, talking to the guy in the hazmat suit. She could easily lie about what happened in the lighthouse.

Will we ever get a follow up movie that shows exactly what the clones do moving forward

1) I think the LENA we see at the end is the real one. When the fake KANE arrived, he didn't remember much. LENA remembered enough details to tell the story to LOMAX. Actually, why *would* a fake LENA tell the story? 2) At the lighthouse, why did the creature mimic LENA's movements only at times? Speaking of that scene, when the creature pushed her against the door, it looked like it was trying to rape her. Is the movie then meant to be an allegory on that subject?

What I don't get about the infinity tattoo is the man they find grafted to the pool wall has the exact same tattoo in the exact same spot.

It was the actual Lena who got out of the lighthouse. She states prior to the the final events that she knows she has been infected. So at the end when the alien doppelganger of Kane's eyes change, hers does as well because she's not completely human anymore.

HOLY SHIT Christy blew my fucking mind with the house thing.

Ego. What you resist persists. Everything as one. I am, you are. Choice.

I thought it was pretty clear the real human lena emerges from the lighthouse and not the double... she puts the grenade in the doubles hand and then walks out, and meanwhile the double burns up inside the lighthouse as it turns to ash... or am I remembering it wrong? I just saw this yesterday, really loved it... the ads don't do it justice at all! Only thing I don't get... why was it inside Ventriss? Seemed to imply she was the locus of the whole event the whole time, but that doesn't make too much sense

The opening of the alligator's mouth reminded me of Jaws.

I’m confused about what people don’t understand about the ending. The one thing I didn’t like is that everything seemed to be overly explained, when it comes to the alien anyway. For example, im pretty sure the tattoo was on another one of her team mates, which I think implies that there may have been a chance that there were elements of her team mates becoming bonded to each other. The focus on the characters is the worst part of the film, in my opinion.

One character says that the bear somehow took on some part of the woman it killed. And that’s why it makes that sound. I think that’s also what happens to Natalie Portman. She gets out (no question, you see the mimic burn) but she has taken on part of thing she killed, like the bear did. She comes back, but so does the mimic.

Annihilation is so good! I LOVE how the bear has the human scream, it's so creepy it reminds me a bit of the evil flowers in The Ruins that make human sounds to toy with the characters like human laughing and crying sounds

I think when she hands over the grenade, unlike when she violently tries to escape, its like a symbolic handing over of her self-destructiveness. Thus when she runs and her clone burns up, it is now self-destructive like she was, burning everything else

i think its a take on body snatchers but in the way it took over her mind and eventually her body. i feel like theyre hinting at the idea that they are now the new adam and eve come out of paradise. i liked the idea that alonso said about the bear the mimickery. \ also the ouroboros was on the guys arms that got cut open so maybe just like everything began to meld together the humans began to meld into each other same matter in a way. also the ouroboros is a symbol of rebirth and change so once she has it on her arm shes already doomed shes already began a change

1. I think the real Lena character survived the lighthouse double scenario because the double was created in front of her eyes and eventually morphed into an exact replica right in front of Natalie's character. Then, immediately the real Lena puts the grenade in the hands of the morphing double, which starts the chain reaction of fire and sparks. There is a POV shot from the real Lena's side as she observes the double on fire in the lighthouse. There's no other way to interpret it. Kane, on the other hand, is a less certain situation. Did the double blow itself up or did Kane?

I heard an Analysis that the shimmer is like an ecological cancer. And that is the purpose of the alien in general is just to spread and grow. Cancer comes up several times in the film and it is a nice analogy because after NP's character defeats the mimic and the shimmer gets destroyed it is like they removed the tumor, but there is always some little piece that can come back which would be NP's and OI's characters at the end of the movie.

With so many allusions to self destruction, maybe the alien/threat wasn't necessarily a physical threat at all. It was itself a representation of the events (external in nature) in our lives that drive our own self destruction. Sometimes we succeed in that endeavor, sometimes we emerge, forever changed by the experience. Consider the metallic doppelganger, which she at first attempts to fight, she only defeats through acceptance. Ventress comes to accept it as well. She is faced with cancer and dies beautifully, when her character accomplishes her goal of reaching the lighthouse and finds peace in the struggle. As the final meteor shower suggests, we are all being bombarded by these events that threaten and change us.

my favorite film

analysis? after their BvS review i didn't know this place did that

Shimmer thing were looking for the best life project, so it didn't like any kind of expediters except Natalie and her husband, Natalie was not the clone, she liked her character (she was already mutated) and she let her win, but the project was already done, basically alien created new Adam and Eve.

I also thought it was brilliant that the way to make the "cancer" die was to force it to replicate itself on fire. and destroyed itself.

also how did alien Isaac get to her house in the beginning?

It's funny that Matt referenced Swamp Thing, as opposed to, John Carpenter's The Thing in regard to Annihilation when most critics refer to the later.

I thought Portman's character at the end had a mix of each of the women she traveled with. Specifically, the tattoo on her arm matches exactly with one of the other characters.

Part of me thinks that it may have been the original character who made it out of the shimmer. Her husband's doubleganger was bleeding into the glass of water whereas her character in the final act didn't bleed, this could be a clue.

So was this Area X the movie?

Gator-Sharknado coming soon on SyFy. Nah, you guys are on point for the most part. Of course it was the original Portman who came back out- they specifically showed when she checked her blood that she was mutating/ becoming infused with the alien DNA. It was in the process of creating a duplicate but the original person was transforming as well as a result of being in the Shimmer.. They all were.

Yeah, That "bear" Attack Was so sickening and realistic that it bothered me for days after. Also, a film that makes you think and have real conversation is much too rare these days.

I believe if this environment is able to interbreed and replicate endlessly, who is to say that any of them where the “original” them upon entering. None of them where able to recall the first few days suggesting they are replicas. The longer you are in there, the more likely you are to be be removed from your original self. This replicating causes short and eventual long term memory loss. Lena’s husband was in there the longest which is why he almost had no recollection.

There's a point in the movie where Natalie Portmans character talks about duplicating as they got closer to the lighthouse and at the beginning of when they first entered they each lost time (3 days I think?) So my theory is they each were all duplicated multiple times within the shimmer so maybe the moment they entered and we see them within the shimmer awake for the first time, they've already been duplicated and their original selves are already gone and what were watching are just clones...

It's on Netflix's I believe

the movie is deep and thought provoking. Need to see it again... but Portman's character was damaged by her affair and the end, IMO is her possible redemption.

Why doesnt anyone mention that the same fucking song plays throughout the entire movie ! Sometimes just acoustic, sometimes with the lyrics but its the same song! Please someone explain, it must have a meaning

I'd have to see it again, but I thought the whole thing was just a metaphor for how people change over time and can never really remain themselves. The characters that don't look to the future and won't acknowledge change (the terminal patient, the depressive) all remain within the shimmer and fade out. Natalie Portman's character resolves to accept the changes in her relationship and fight to revive it. She comes out of the shimmer realizing that it didn't want to destroy you or help you, it didn't have an agenda, or a point of view, it was only there to bring about change, to mutate for better or worse because that's what happens in life. At then end, she asks: "are you Kane?" and he says "I don't know." She says she's not sure who she is either. Both of them have just gone through a traumatic ordeal - a ruined marriage symbolized by their travel through the shimmer - and have come out different people. Like the Swedish actress on the boat says: "More than missing my child, I missed who I used to be."

There are many interpretations for the climax. But I think the simplest way to see it is as a secret invasion. Alien was trying to copy Lena when it pushed her against the door, but she kills it. When Lena gets back to her fake husband she hugs him and then we see her get the shimmer in her eyes, thus the copy was completed. Definitely want to see it again!!

Funny, they want to see it again after the discussion and I now feel I don't. (but I rarely see anything repeatedly)

I think the original Lena walks into the center of the shimmer to destroy it. She is called a fighter at the beginning of the movie and that is what she does at the end. When Lena confronts the blob in the center, you see a bit of her blood go into the blob, therefore it has her DNA and is able to create Lena2. The original Lena at the end burst into the white fire and touches her husband who is dead as if to say good by and then goes into the center to demolish it. Lena2 is shocked by this but realizes she is now Lena2 and goes back to see Husband2.

What I didn’t understand was what happened in the 4 days they lost when they first went in? Were they only in there for a couple days or for weeks

As far as which Natalie Portman makes it out of the shimmer, the story is being told by the Natalie Portman on the outside. So the events we see in the confrontation might not have gone down as we were shown. If the alien Portman left the shimmer (as the alien version of Oscar Isaac did), she could just be telling her interrogator it was the alien version that was killed. Either it was the alien version that survived or the refraction of Area X caused the original Portman to take on a parts of the alien version. In a way, it doesn't matter because either way the biologist who left Area X was a combination of the two versions. Hell, she might not even be sure which one she started as.

The alien entity was running an experiment to see which dna and lifeform will help it most survive, which was humans, but it had to figure out how to become human without the self destructive nature.

The bear aint the girls throat, which containing her vocal chords. Her vocal chords fused/ mutant into the bear. But I like the idea it uses the voice to lure prey

The Shimmer is the alien adapting/making sense of its new 'alien' environment -- I dont think the Shimmer ever meant to crash on Earth, so it's basically just trying to survive and maybe terraform its new surrounding into something it can call home (or not, "I dunno," to paraphrase alien Oscar Isaac in the movie) LOL

Nature is one big chemistry set without it there is nothing and no man needs nothing.

My interpretation: Kane’s clone and original Lena made it out. Kane didn’t make it because he’d lost his desire to survive, whereas Lena hadn’t. The point of life in general is to spread by adapting to its surroundings, which is what I think was happening with the asteroid, the shimmer and the alien. Lena survives the shimmer because she shares its goal; to survive. Organ donor bodies reject organs if they’re too dissimilar; only Lena was a ‘natural fit’ for the shimmer. It doesn’t really matter to me if the alien has conscious intent, because survival and biological instincts don’t require consciousness. All we really see the alien do is mimic, which doesn’t require advanced intelligence. Most life gets by fine without it.

Interesting comments in this piece on randomness and chance, etc.. BUT. none of it explains why the alien/clone goes about destroying the whateveritis/source of the shimmer in the lighthouse. It seemed to me to be a mission accomplished kind of thing, but that implies intent and a plan, which is at odds with the explanations put forth here and elsewhere.

A piece of art is never finished, it's only abandoned

Is that Hodor?

I just wanted to mention that the bear is extremely reminiscent of a 'monster' from a Gene Wolfe book. It shows up in "the shadow of the torturer". Google "Alzabo". It was terrifying in that book. -just checked reddit and apparently lots of ppl noticed this. cheers!

Its super easy. The Shimmer is cancer. What if the earth got cancer. There is a lot of cancer talk in the movie. There is a scene where Portman is reading a book called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which is a book where the main character is dying from cancer.

Logic and meaning

The two of them are going to have children spreading the alien! I DONT KNOW

This film is odd... too many unanswered questions... why does Josie turn into a plant? Was it because she gave up? ... and why don't the rest turn? Same with the duplicates... why were some animals duplicated and not all? (I have a theory to that one actually, probably did have duplicates but they killed each other due to their instincts... but then mutated? The croc and bear). Hmmm... Plus the ending, only reason i think the clone Lena is the one that got out (apart from the eyes) is when the one left in the light house is on fire, she goes to her husband and seems to hold his head then proceeds to spread the fire around... why didn't they both ran out as they were mimicking each other? Good film overall though, would recommend it #JusBlazeArmy

I kind of thought about the flood from halo with this movie. Except for a gravemind behind everything, it’s just nature. Idk it was a mix of the flood from halo and like alien? I have no clue if that makes sense but yeah

SPOILER- Im surprised they didnt mention the Shimmer as a metaphor for cancer or creating a cancer on earth. Such a good scifi thriller. This is like a perfect rainy day movie but its very immersive. Its has Twilight Zone mix with Invasion of Body Snatchers.

There is no alien. It's husband leaving his anger and pride behind and a wife leaving her self-destructiveness. They are reunited as two changed people to create one whole again.

What happened to the psychologist??

The tattoo on Leena's arm is the exact same tattoo that Anya has

She makes a good point.

The Gina Rodriguez character originally has that infinity tattoo and Natalie doesn't get it until after (SPOILERS) the Gina character is killed by the bear. So there's something.

My interpretation for the bear was it showed that the bear ate the throat & voice box thus consuming her final voice/screams. Thank you Alonso for mentioning "where the hell the tattoo came from?" I was real focused on it, not sure how it went from Gina Rodriguez to Portman but...Hot damn did I dig this movie, so interpretable, discussable, and seemingly will be endlessly rewatchable.

I believe a couple lines from the movie explains the ending. Lena discusses life coming from a single cell, alone in the world, which becomes 2, 4, 8, etc. She also mentions that God makes mistakes because our DNA is not perfect. We can age, get cancer and diseases all because of how the DNA was designed. I hypothesize that this is a lone alien. Its hyper-cube look seems to suggest it is from another dimension which has more spacial dimensions. In an effort to survive and propagate, it experiments with DNA to create the perfect form. It ultimately creates two doppelgangers. So from one becomes two. Their DNA is probably much more intelligently designed to avoid aging, and common diseases. They may even retain some genes from the other organisms in the shimmer. Once the experiment was over, the failed experiments and trail stages were burned and the final products left and lied about what happened.

The story is told from Lena’s perspective. If it was the double that came out it wouldn’t have her memories much like Kane’s double didn’t have his memories. Talking bear? It mimic’d sounds of its prey but was far from having a conversation.

The fuck? This movie came out of nowhere. It blew me away.

This movie about the refraction of everything.

”Its some kind of Dark Matter based life form that unintentionally affected our environment by crashing on Earth and trying to survive. Until it found a way to mimic, blend in, coexist and survive to become the next Evolutionary Step of Humankind” The Echo of Life.

The original (real) Nataly IS the one that comes out of the shimmer at the end, this is very clearly seen/suggested in the movie at the end. She is just now "infected" by going into the shimmer like all other beings/plants that get caught in the shimmer's area. But is IS the original/real Nataly that comes back, there is no question of this! =)

Did not catch the house issue. Have to watch this movie again for that and several other elements. However, I do think that the "real" Natalie Portman emerged with the doppleganger dead and the opposite with the Oscar Isaac character. This movie differs from the book, but both are enjoyable.

I don’t think Natalie Portmans character expected to come back... I mean she just did it out of love and remorse... Kane was basically dead with all of the horrible health problems he cane back with at the time.. the ones that ultimately made it through the farthest are the ones that felt dead inside already.. the one that actually expected to come back was the one that lost her marbles first

My whole portrayal of the movie was that: it's like having a group of people taking the same drug and each of them reacting differently to it, based on their pasts and the way they feel now inside.✌❤ That's what the shimmer represents in my opinion.

I loved this freaking movie