'Annihilation' review: Natalie Portman excels in psychedelic sci-fi freakout

Natalie Portman in "Annihilation." (Peter Mountain | Photo provided to MLive.com by Paramount Pictures)

The most effective journeys go inward as they go outward. “Annihilation” is a potent and suspenseful trek into heady sci-fi, starring Natalie Portman as a resilient soldier-scientist bravely investigating what appears to be an extraterrestrial phenomenon. It’s dubbed “The Shimmer,” a warped barrier resembling massive prismatic soap bubbles covering a piece of swampy coastline in the southern U.S. And yes, of course, it’s expanding.

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What will she find in there? An alternate reality? Dinosaurs? Aliens? The thing from “The Thing”? The end of “2001: A Space Odyssey”? Knowing the provocative work of sci-fi auteur Alex Garland, who directed “Ex Machina” and wrote “Sunshine,” “28 Days Later” and “Never Let Me Go,” the primary question evolves: When will the trek through the forest become an expedition into the mind?

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Natalie Portman in "Annihilation." (Peter Mountain | Photo provided to MLive.com by Paramount Pictures)

As these situations so often go, many have entered The Shimmer, but none have returned. Well, one has: Portman’s character, Lena, an Army vet and biologist, tells her strange, strange story in flashback while she’s in quarantine, surrounded by officials in hazmat suits. Check that – there are two survivors, sort of. Lena’s soldier husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac) walked into their house after being missing a year, presumed dead. I say “sort of” because he’s not quite himself. He’s cold and vague in his manner, and appears psychologically hollowed out, like someone cracked open his personality and shook out the walnut.

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Kane, who perhaps not coincidentally bears the same name as John Hurt’s character in “Alien,” then coughs up blood, and is taken away in an ambulance, which is forced off the road by black SUVs, full of men who snatch him, drug Lena and whisk them off to a secret locale deep in the heart of a conspiracy. He returned from a trip into The Shimmer, and is Not Right.

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Natalie Portman in "Annihilation." (Peter Mountain | Photo provided to MLive.com by Paramount Pictures)

Lena shakes off the cobwebs, gets over her roughshod kidnapping right quick, and agrees to join a squad of female scientists on an excursion to the other side. She yearns to find something, anything to help save Kane’s life. Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a psychologist, Cass Shepherd (Tuva Novotny) is an anthropologist, Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson) is a physicist, and Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez) is a paramedic, and if each character isn’t a full symphony, at least they’re not entirely one-note.

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Upon entering The Shimmer, they immediately wake up with no recollection of time having passed. Radios don't work; compass needles just spin and spin. At first glance, the place seems like a typical mildly eerie movie forest, but the details are… off. Lena notes unnatural clusters of flora. As for the fauna, well, the massive, overly aggressive alligator they kill with a volley of bullets shows signs of significant mutation.

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Jennifer Jason Leigh and Natalie Portman in "Annihilation." (Photo provided to MLive.com by Paramount Pictures)

Portman is intense and convincing as a woman who’s as comfortable with an M-16 as she is with a microscope, and therefore up for a quest into a great whatever-it-may-be. But the mystery drives the film’s storytelling engine, and character psychology functions as the ever-important passenger-seat navigator. The women slowly reveal themselves, answering our questions as to why they’d embark on what appears to be a suicide mission; Lena hides the truth that her personal mission is one of hope, fueled by love for her husband and the guilt of an imperfect marriage.

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Conversing with Lena, Dr. Ventress points out the difference between suicide and self-destruction as psychological constructs, a key to the film's dense topicality. It's more suggestive than plaintive, so I'll extrapolate: Is the phenomenon evolution itself, initiating assertive biological modification to push back against human exploitation of the natural world? Is the phenomenon intelligent? And if so, how intelligent? It sets up shop in a lighthouse, a literary symbol of vigilance, and warnings of potential danger, so it sure seems smart.

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Natalie Portman in "Annihilation." (Peter Mountain | Photo provided to MLive.com by Paramount Pictures)

I’m treading carefully, because “Annihilation” is at its best when its revelatory. Adapting the first book of novelist Jeff VanderMeer’s “Southern Reach” trilogy, Garland teases a far-out third-act mind trip, and risks writing a check we can’t cash. But it clears, in a delightfully discomforting finale rife with psychedelic horror, covering territory from “Alien” all the way to “Apocalypse Now” and “Arrival.” And let’s just say it stresses the idea that forceful self-reflection can provide solutions to our biggest problems.

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The conclusion doesn't really conclude anything, and just poses more questions – something good movies do, because they're more realistic in their approach to relevant ideas. A recent report stated that Paramount Pictures clashed with Garland and producer Scott Rudin after he was dissatisfied with the results. Rudin had final cut, and the film stayed as is, but Paramount sold international distribution rights to Netflix, pushing it out of theatrical release everywhere but in the U.S. It's a classic battle of art vs. commerce, and is shortsighted, because "Annihilation" is visually rich, and best viewed on a big screen. Besides, what did Paramount want? Yet another monster movie? A Shimmer filled with bigger and bigger things bearing bigger and bigger teeth? The film gives its audience something to chew on, and while that's a metaphor and an intangible asset, it makes the final product more nutritious to the intellect.

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Jennifer Jason Leigh, Natalie Portman, Tuva Novotnyin, Tessa Thompson and Gina Rodriguez in "Annihilation." (Peter Mountain | Photo provided to MLive.com by Paramount Pictures)

FILM REVIEW

‘Annihilation’

3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPAA rating: R for violence, bloody image, language and some sexuality

Cast: Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson

Director: Alex Garland

Run time: 115 minutes

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