A-why-hilation?

Today is a dark day. Perhaps the darkest, despite the extended daylight hours ironically. We all have these days, when a dark cloud hangs over us, and a terrible task awaits completion despite every sinew and bone screaming at you in contradiction. The inevitable has indeed come to fruition: Justice League is out on DVD and I have no option but to buy and watch it because I owe it to you, my avid readers, all four of you. It will not be pretty, it will not be over quickly, and I'm fairly sure the only thing that will keep my spirits up is the anticipation of actually witnessing the results of what nobody is calling Moustache Gate.

There are some things on the horizon to help keep the old murderous rampage at bay; Infinity War is just around the corner, Pacific Rim 2 is raising its probably ridiculous Kaiju head and we all know how much I love a good giant monster vs robot street fight. We'll make it out alive folks, by hook or by crook; can't guarantee our collective dignity will be in tact but we'll agree to never speak of it again and go back to our families knowing that we survived.

Speaking of which (tenuous segue alert) I got round to watching Annihilation, the latest Sci Fi offering from Alex Garland. I was quietly hopeful, because he has good form; he wrote the screenplay for Dredd (which is brilliant) and directed ex-machina which was pretty enjoyable. Most people remember him from The Beach but I refused to watch that on the grounds that it had Leonardo DiCaprio in it and for the longest time I really wanted to punch him very hard in his annoying, Brussels Sprout-shaped face. It's probably quite good, (the film, not his face) but I can't really comment (on either actually). There was a certain amount of concern raised when the studio opted to change its distribution model almost overnight and suddenly Annihilation went from a planned cinema release to Netflix. I'm not saying that's worked out terribly before (*cough *cough Cloverfield Paradox *cough oh excuse me) but it really has worked out terribly before. All I can say is that if I'd forked out the best part of a tenner on Annihilation at the cinema I'm fairly likely to have attempted to asphyxiate myself with popcorn. Or decapitate myself with a reclining chair. What do you mean, 'too soon'? Anyway, moving on...

In fairness Annihilation isn't completely terrible. It just isn't completely anything. It seems like the central purpose of the movie is just to be as confusing as possible so hipsters can discuss how they get it and throw scorn on us plebs when we don't. Problem is, there are reasons why it's impenetrable in places and that's because it's really poor at explaining itself. I'm all for high concept Sci Fi shenanigans, but at least employ logic within the world you're creating.

In terms of plot, things start out in a fairly straightforward fashion; some sort of meteorite hits the Earth, weird lighting effects surround the crash site and teams of people disappear trying to see what's going on. One of the missing soldiers mysteriously reappears and his wife, the ex-military cellular biologist is well up for trekking into the shimmery death zone with a bunch of other foolhardy ladies in order to find out what the deuce is going on. Therein lies the biggest problem; I don't think anyone involved really knows what's going on and it really shows. Firstly, the team lose six days the very instant they get there. One shot, they're walking into the trees, next shot they all wake up with tents pitched, rations depleted and absolutely no idea why, other than watching people set up camp and eat food out of silver packets is inherently boring. If that however is necessary to the plot, you never find out how or why; it's just glossed over in the midst of all the other shenanigans. There's some found footage of Natalie Portman's husband cutting his mate's stomach open to reveal that he's actually full of eels, or tentacles or something similarly cribbed from Urotsokidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (demon cocks destroy Tokyo anyone? No? OK suit yourself) who then possibly ends up bisected and plastered to the wall of a disused swimming pool surrounded by flowers, because of course he does. There's a bear with no face for no apparent reason other than it's creepy, which then ends up having the voice of one of its victims which is again, super creepy but it doesn't really ever say why. There's a very naive, just-out-of-college biologist who seems incredibly comfortable and adept with an assault rifle, but this is America and it's likely she's had one since she was old enough to do live shooter drills, so maybe I should lay off. More importantly she randomly works out that whatever crash landed is monkeying about with everything's DNA in an epiphany that literally comes out of nowhere before even more randomly having a bit of a breakdown and turning into flowers. Jennifer Jason Leigh sounds perpetually stoned and explodes into light for some reason before Natalie Portman donates some blood to a visual effect leftover from a Tool music video, which turns into a weird stickman who is smart enough to stop her escaping out of the only door in the lighthouse they find themselves in, but not smart enough to realise it's holding a phosphorus grenade without its pin. Holy smokes. The ending saves one more twist for last which I won't ruin for you in case you fancy watching it, but rest assured it inspired more of a dissatisfied 'ugh' than an intrigued 'hmm'. I hope they aren't planning a sequel.

I suppose I shouldn't be too harsh, because it wasn't the most horrible evening's viewing but it just wasn't very inspiring. I'm afraid Netflix isn't having the greatest of runs in my eyes: Bright was dull, Veronica was about as scary as a small pile of overly wet kitchen paper and Annihilation was a much less portentous and forboding than it's grand title would have you believe. Still, there's always Justice League to look forward to, right?