Annihilation | Full Length Reaction
Added 2024-11-21 06:01:26 +0000 UTCComments
I think the soldier with his guts moving also had the tattoo along with Anya if I remember correctly. I think it had to do with the shimmer refracting everything. I do think it’s Lena at the end but whatever the shimmer did to her is in there too. The double of her husband could still be very much like her husband because of the refractions. Lena told the scientists that it wasn’t just mutations but also duplicates of form, like the deer. Really liked your reaction. This trilogy of books are great but they aren’t like the movie. Still interesting though.
Devon Michelle
2025-01-06 00:36:24 +0000 UTCOh that was nice. That half and half. Makes sense why the original cane felt like he wasn't all there in the head. And the new alien cane also feels half and half. Yeah they were all fucked from the moments they stepped into the Shimmer. In a creepy way but from Nature's point of view also probably in a beautiful way
Franklin
2024-11-26 01:47:58 +0000 UTCoh damn. I like that. Only both of them came out of the experience as new people, different people
Franklin
2024-11-26 01:46:01 +0000 UTCVery true. It's always fun to hear different people's interpretation on things. I heard this was one of three books. I can only imagine all the wonders in all of them. Sending Love from Minnesota☃️
Franklin
2024-11-26 01:33:06 +0000 UTCHeart rate definitely was Sky High. I agree with a similarity with Hannibal as well. So so good
Franklin
2024-11-26 01:31:21 +0000 UTCYes yes he is the bear. omg The movie has Beauty in so many ways
Franklin
2024-11-26 01:30:02 +0000 UTCthat bear is so terrifying!! i always remember it as one of the scariest things i've ever seen in a movie lol. i also get so emotional when the vines came out of the other woman's arm.
sparkle
2024-11-22 06:09:03 +0000 UTCSo excited for your reaction to the bear; it gets my heart rate up even though I've seen it many times. So many things are well done in this film - I can understand the Last of Us vibes, with the guitar and nature and mutations... I also see a bit of the aesthetic from Hannibal, with the beauty and delicateness in the world, while it is also harsh, violent and creepy, with many layers. An excellent book series and surreal sci-fi, great choice.
Charlie Ito
2024-11-22 01:40:55 +0000 UTCOh, I love this interpretation! I'm adding it to mine as another layer to be found in this.
Lola Lirola
2024-11-21 15:58:46 +0000 UTCI love that this movie can be interpreted in so many ways, it makes it so personal for each veiwer. I'm just about to finally start reading this book series. Science fiction and fantasy to the rescue...we could all use a lil respite and reprieve. I came back to my comment to add that living in a rainforest, things can look like the fungus, flora, and fauna in this film & The Last of Us. I adore it. Sending love to all reading this from Oregon 🌲🌊
Bethany that's me
2024-11-21 15:39:35 +0000 UTCTrying to answer a few questions Frank has, according to movie logic: The tattoo: Lena's bruise is the tattoo emerging. She picks up pieces and refractions of the things she encounters during the journey, and that's one of them. The serpent eating its own tail is called Ouroboros. (they had a symbol like that on the Neverending Story book, I loved it as a kid). The Other Kane: even though I have my metaphorical theory about who he is, in the movie I think basically he went on the same journey as Lena, found an alien who started mirroring him and becoming him as well, and instead of trying to escape, decided to surrender. Asked the alien to film his death and then "go find Lena".
Lola Lirola
2024-11-21 15:09:47 +0000 UTCOkay, so I have a long, long breakdown of all the metaphors I see in this movie! The shortest version is: It's all about how we can't remain the same person we were after trauma. The not-as-short and more mundane version is: It's about Lena coming to terms with the effects of her infidelity and the damage she has done, as she probably heads for divorce. I like to look at genre films and ask myself what they are talking about if you remove all the genre elements. Which sometimes makes people bristle, because they think I'm saying it's not really about aliens, or space, or anything like that, but it is. To me, interpretations are always adding, it's always "and", it's never "instead". So, this is about aliens, and terraforming, and body snatching, and beautiful mutations, and the terrifying power and indifference of Nature itself, but it's also about: A journey of self-reflection and rebuild after a traumatic event. It started three years ago: the meteor falling is Lena cheating. That changes everything, herself, her husband, the very world she lives in. We see Oscar Isaac coming in all black and "different", cold: he's just in shock; it's from the mission, but it represents being shattered by finding out about the infidelity, and no longer "recognizing" his wife. He's been changed by the experience. So when Frank said at the very beginning "I don't think that's your husband", he was already right! If you notice, at the beginning and the end both Kane and Lena have shots of their wedding rings fragmented in the reflection of a glass of water. The marriage is broken. Lena feels incredibly guilty, so she tries to empathize with what her husband is going through. So she decides to walk in his shoes, put herself in his place. She "owes him". The moment she touches the shimmer, we smash cut to her having the affair with her colleague: the thing she has to admit. The Shimmer is a process, almost like therapy. Everything is distorted and pulled apart and changed until it can be rebuilt differently. On the river, Lena says "It feels like a lifetime ago" and Sheppard states the thesis of the movie: "In a way it's two bereavements, the thing that happened, and the person I once was". Traumatic experiences change you forever, you can't be the same person again. Lena still has to understand that. Ventress says "we self-destruct. we destabilize the happy marriage. you're probably more equipped to talk about it than I am" (because of what she did). and right then is when the bear first appears. At the house, she sees her DNA has been definitely altered, and immediately we cut to her flashback of the infidelity, and her saying "this was a mistake". It's her starting to admit to herself that this changed her, and it's when we as an audience find out that's what actually happened. She says to Dan "It's never gonna happen again", and immediately we cut to Anya yelling "You lying b*tch!", and then to Oscar Isaac leaving. (I want to note here that the affair happened during another mission of Kane, they established he went on several before. He found out about the cheating and that's why he accepted the Shimmer mission, because he no longer cared if he lived or died.) The mid-point of the movie is trying to get Lena to admit she lied to everyone, to herself, to her husband, to her fellow explorers. Everyone is starting to feel the changes. The bear is kind of the embodiment of trauma: forever expressing agony, trapped at the moment of most pain. It is violent and disturbing, but also part of nature, unconscious: the pain is actually a cry for help, but it pours out of him and hurts everyone around him, yet the bear doesn't even know what it means. "Imagine if that is the only part of you that survives". Ventress says "It's not easy to move on", and it's true, everyone else gets trapped in amber at their point of trauma, they don't get to become a new person. Nobody got out before, only Lena and Kane do. When we finally arrive at the lighthouse, Lena leaves all her baggage (backpack) behind. But she's still defensive, she takes her gun. Ventress reminds us: "the person who began this journey won't be the same one that ends it". They're entering a self-examination space, like a therapist office. Self-exploration inevitably changes you. Enlightenment can consume you, like it ultimate does Ventress in literal light, or you might get stuck in your pain like Sheppard, or you can devote yourself into giving life to others and helping them thrive (children, caregiving) like Josie does, or you can emerge a new person, like Lena does. And like Kane does. We find Kane in the lighthouse. Right before exploding and changing, he expresses his betrayal: "I thought I was a man. I had a life". Lena's infidelity burnt those self-concepts to a crisp, so he has to find out who he really is anew, after it. Lena sees this, and is ready to finally acknowledge that what she did damaged her husband. To confront it, she has to go deep into the darkest hole, not knowing what she'll find. Looking in is both gorgeous and dangerous. She finds the core of herself there, kinda shapeless, but completely solid, it's what she's made of. She comes out of it like a rebirth and her true self is already waiting for her. Then, she has to fight herself, her truest nature: but her double will always mirror her movements, so the only way to win is to yield. (Frank even said "it's almost like it's trying to understand her!" at this point). Let go of resistance, and accept herself and the consequences of what she's done. Only then she can leave. And only then, the shimmer stops. It was "making something new". When she rejoins her husband, neither of them is sure if they can continue being who they were before for each other. Lena says "You aren't Kane, are you?" as in 'you're no longer my husband/the man I knew', and he says "I don't think so". He's finally at peace. Kane then asks "Are you Lena?", and she can't answer that yet. Now they have to find out who they've become after everything they've gone through. Because life changes all of us over time, and we can't stay the same person through it all. The end.
Lola Lirola
2024-11-21 14:55:45 +0000 UTCOk, this is the meaning of the movie as I understand it. The movie itself is about cancer and grief with the shimmer representing cancer and the five women representing both victims and stages of grief. The shimmer wasn't there and then it suddenly appeared, growing, changing and corrupting everything it touched. It's neither good nor evil, it just IS and it's relentless. (Think of Lena's fight against herself...it IS her, just...wrong.) Denial is Shepherd who is immediately killed but becomes an echo of herself due to the way the shimmer (cancer - in this case her daughter's) ravaged and mutated and distorted her (the bear.) Anger was Anya...she thought she could fight her way out of her fate with rage and violence, but, she met her fate all the same because she can't process what's happening to her. Bargaining was Josie. It may seem like acceptance at first, but by simply giving in and neither fighting nor even facing it, she bargains for a less terrifying fate by simply giving in and turning into part of the landscape. Ventress is depression...she completely gives up all hope once at the center of the thing and the cancer entirely destroys her. Acceptance, then, is Lena. She faces her cancer which is, as all cancer is, her own body fighting itself. In the end, she (along with her husband) survives...but they are both changed, as all cancer survivors are. They aren't who they were anymore but they arent sure what it means. It may be an overly deep look at it, but the pieces fit to me.
Jessi
2024-11-21 12:42:35 +0000 UTCThe entire premise was on DNA and mutations. Kane was mutated his mutation filmed his annihilation, Lena was mirrored and mutated. It seems to me as though the endgame was to have a new mutated, Adam and Eve in Kane and Lena. I’ve never read the books I’ve never seen the movie. But my instincts are that the human Cane and Lena died, and the endgame of this shimmer which showed us throughout the movie that it was replicating and mutating and mirroring, and it would seem to me that the ultimate mirroring and replicating the DNA of humanityinto the mirrored cane and Lena starting a new species of humans.
Laura Thate
2024-11-21 09:12:24 +0000 UTCMy interpretation is that it’s Lena, but she’s also the alien. Basically half-and-half. Same with her husband… the alien has absorbed so much of him that it’s kind of hard to say it’s NOT him. A large part of him lives on in that other body. It would explain why the original is so strange and detached when he lights up that grenade, he’s a mixture too. Maybe even from the moment they enter the shimmer, they’re all mixing up with whatever’s nearby. The plants, each other, the animals, the rocks, even the light. It’s almost like achieving nirvana, complete oneness with the world (and annihilation of the self). But like… in a really creepy way 😅.
Valaree
2024-11-21 08:38:42 +0000 UTCGod, I love this movie! I'm interested to see if you saw through to the true meaning... Watching it a second time was infinitely more heartbreakingly beautiful than the first.
Jessi
2024-11-21 06:44:02 +0000 UTCWahoo, Annihilation! I've of my favourite movies of the last ten years. Can't wait to see you watch the creepy beauty of it unfold!
William Russell
2024-11-21 06:37:39 +0000 UTC
