The author said that his concept for the shimmer was based on animals in nature using mimicry to camouflage. But then expanded it to an alien ecosystem.
Regarding the "Ouroboros" Tattoo: I have the feeling that you forget is that Time and memories also get refracted in the shimmer. if Lenas literal house can get refracted and created inside of the shimmer, then there is no reason why the original tattoo can't get refracted through time to appear on someone else ...thats the point of the shimmer, I think. all that exists can and will be influenced and refracted on everything that exists. that's what makes it so extremely dangerous and beautiful at the same time.
@@PharadayCage THIS IS WHAT MOST PEOPLE MISS! Yes. It's "remixing" reality itself. It isn't limited to genetics, it's reading and rewriting patterns of information.
this movie is one of the rare times where the adaptaion made me read the book as opposed to the other way around, but the southern reach trillogy went hard, the middle book is mostly a bridge and quite hard to get through but provides the much needed context to finish the third book. great stuff
I would highly recommend his Ambergris Cycle books if you liked the Southern Reach trilogy. It's very different. More traditionally Lovecraftian with a Victorian/Edwardian era setting, but with really interesting creatures and mysteries
Facts she was the one character I locked onto throughout the hell they go through she's constantly "somewhere else." Like she accepted everything already further backing her knowing she has cancer and on a mission
Annihilation has always been one of my favorite movies. I've seen it multiple times and I always feel I find something new to it. Also for the body horror stuff I find it both fascinating but equally terrifying because to some level I've lived through some more real aspects of it last year. After I had a valve transplant (bovine valve) I had a stroke a few months after. Ironically my husband spotted the symptoms of the stroke after seeing the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly all about a guy who had a stroke and became paralyzed and trapped in his own body. Though I've since recovered due to getting treatment quickly, the feeling of being unable to control your own limbs is extremely terrifying. I can't really describe how frightening it all was realizing my own body was against me and feeling deeply changed emotionally. Such a great analysis of an amazing movie! I may need to give it another rewatch!
Whoa! I can see how that would be terrifying. It's honestly easy to forget how scary real life can be while analyzing fiction. I've been very lucky to never have experienced anything like that. Thank you for the kind words!
Great commentary! I had a stroke in february and you explained it perfectly how it feels both being unable to control certain parts of your body, but also losing trust in how your body is supposed to support you but cannot do so. I think what most people have in common is the idea that we're in control of ourselves and our circumstances, but stuff like this gives you a really terrifying lesson how little control we have(i.e. our health) And a movie like Annihilation goes crazy with the concept of rapidly experiencing a change in your body without you wanting it to happen. (which is kinda lovecraftian in itself) Its also nice to read you recovered from it! hope you stay healthy
@@criticalcoffeeAll of the ugliest, most terrifying monsters and devils humanity has ever created are still us putting an easy to look at mask on our fears. Being stuck in a room with a bear is somehow less scary to us than being in the dark and hearing a low, snorting growl.
When I was little I experienced type of seizure that was different than a grand mal (can’t recall what kind it was). I couldn’t open my right hand, it could only form a fist, I couldn’t remember who my mom was, my speech was jumbled and incoherent. I felt like I was in a strange dream like state. Nothing made sense, and my own body felt foreign. The seizure lasted hours. I’m replying to your comment with this because I both relate to your experience and relate to the feeling of foreignness and change present in this film. The shimmer literally looked like the sky during my seizure. Feeling like your body is betraying your commands and even feeling like your body doesn’t know what a command is is… absolutely horrifying. I can’t believe this film managed to capture it.
I sort of took it along similar lines, but more that everything we encounter becomes part of us, so that whether she is original or a copy is arbitrary; to my reading, she isn't the copy from the lighthouse, but her victory over it is hollow because she is not fundamentally different from it, and it wouldn't have known any differently if it had been the Lena to walk out.
SPOILERS FOR THE BOOKS Thats almost exactly what happened. They only focused on the first (of 3) book for the film and squished some stuff together, as well as the ending of the film being an incredibly watered down version of what actually happens. But yeah. If you like the film you should 100% read the Southern Reach. Its like a mix of Stephan King and Clive Barker.
@@KingfisherMCfor the sake of brevity, what ends up happening with her husband? is he completely gone and replaced with the alien copy? do they continue to coexist together? I really liked their plotline
@@litneyloxan Obviously spoilers here It was a while ago since i read the books but iirc you never see or meet the real husband. Hes already gone through the shimmer and what came back out is basically what happens to her when she goes down the stairs. Its somewhat implied he could be a creature moving through some swampy area (not in the movie at all, replaced by the bear) that sounds human but is some mutated wild boar thing. Thats only hinted at in her thoughts though and its never actually confirmed. She never meets her husband again in human form in any case, hes already mutated by the time the story begins. Fun fact though, she does end up meeting herself... ;) now go read the books
@@KingfisherMCthe ending of this movie is so bad. It’s such an uncreative and bad looking ending. If that’s what’s in the book, it better not at all feel like the movie. The metal man EDM music video was just not cosmic horror nor interesting sci fi. The whole movie was bad, and the end just nailed that down for sure. If it had ended on her looking into a cosmic horror portal hole/alien then maybe it would have left a good taste. But it just ends up being the most generic and shallow, cgi spectacle heavy, garbage. All of the horror in this movie is thrown onto the CGI creatures, replacing it with shallow exploration of what is actually scary: the psychological and body horror prodded on slowly by the literal atmosphere of cosmic horror slowly inflicting itself into the life inside it. Just like all life on earth is molded by environment.
Annihilation reminds me a lot of Lovecrafts The Color Out of Space literally about a unknown alien life form that landed on a región on earth and started mutating the environment
That’s exactly how I felt as well. The motivations of the alien is meaningless. It’s basically bringing madness and is beyond comprehension like any lovecraftian abomination.
I just watched that the other day and thought the same thing. It literally seems like he stole the plot from Annihilation to make a shittier version of it.
@@samuelfoisy I’m referring to the book version and not the movie adaptation with Nic Cage. The Color out of Space is a much older book than Annihilation, I always assumed that the author was influenced by H.P. Lovecraft’s work which is a plus for me.
I will never get tired of people exploring the ideas of this film. I take the ending, of her asking the new Kane if he is Kane, and him saying he doesn't think so, and asking if she's Lena, to get only hesitation, to be less of an indication that she's not Lena, and more of posing the question as to what it means to be anyone at all; even without the refraction and reflection of herself and everything around her, at what point do your experiences leave you as an entirely different person to the one you started as - much as in Lord of the Rings, Frodo never settles back into the Shire; he's still Frodo, but with everything he has been through, "Frodo" means someone different now to who it meant at the beginning of the story. Another element which I think affects Lena's and (both) Kanes' senses of identity is the time distortion; Lena lost time, at least several days, as soon as she entered the shimmer, and so on reflection, the only way she knows that she is her is that she can remember being her; the Kane at the end knows almost explicitly that he is not the original, but on the other hand, he remembers being Kane, and the Kane who self-destructs presumably is as unclear as Lena as to whether he is the original, except by his memories, so no version can be entirely sure that they aren't the 'real' one, because the very idea of a true version becomes arbitrary.
Annihilation is one of my all time favourite movies, and the books are among my favourites also. It's a real shame there were so many creative differences between Vandermeer and Garland, to the point that not that long ago Vandermeer did an entire livewatch to dump on the movie, that at least in my mind adapted the themes in a way that translated to the screen better than the original books would have. With that said, I cannot WAIT for the 4th volume coming out in October. But it's this video, more than the upcoming book itself, that's made me want to go back and rewatch and reread all of it all over again. Excellent work, subscribed.
Oh wow, I had no idea there was animosity between them. All the interviews I read didn't give this impression. The Google Talks interview with Garland for example has him admit that he did a very loose adaptation and that VanderMeer was cool with it. IIRC VanderMeer said something similar in an interview as well. Oh well, shame to hear this, I genuinely love both stories and story-tellers. I'll definitely read Absolution as soon as it comes out. Thank you for the kind words and the sub!
Regarding the odd form of the movie alien, the fractal patterns used are likely a representation of what a higher dimensional being would look like from our lower dimensional perception. When it forms the humanoid avatar, this is not the entirety of the alien. It is an avatar of the alien created to interact with this world. Think of our world as a fish tank and the alien reaching a hand into it. To the fish, the hand is the complete alien creature from an unknown reality and the fish are completely unaware of the Lovecraftian to them being on the other side of the hand and would go mad if they could comprehend it.
imo the most inspired moment of sci fi, and maybe movie history! I am in awe of that moment with the music blaring interrupting the silence that proceeded it, so alien from any natural instruments, truly great scene!
This is such a good essay. It isnt a summary with themes explained like so many other "video essays". This is a straight to the core analysis and gives insight that I didnt see while watching. Thank you for that.
I remember Critical Drinker's review of this movie and he was yapping on about how the alien didn't make sense and there was no logic to it. And I'm surprised that he was overlooking the blatantly obvious. It's an ALIEN. It's not supposed to make sense. The fact that nobody can get a grasp on what it is, what it's doing, or what it wants is the whole point of it's existence.
UA-cam used to recommend me his videos at the time and I used to see something he does every now and then. I was mostly annoyed by his voice to the point I didn't focus much on what he was actually saying. Then I saw his video of Annihilation and I was like "seriously?" Not only his "trademark" voice is obnoxious, what he says is actually straight nonsense garbage, and I stopped watching him. As you said, he main issue with the movie was "what is the alien acting in a non-human way?" It's so dumb it's actually funny. A few months ago youtube started recommending me his videos again and I decided to see his take on Furiosa, to see if he's improved. Nope. The obnoxious voice is still the same. And the stupid takes are still there. He didn't like the movie because "Mad Max with no Max" and that's his whole argument. And I keep seeing the same kind of stupid argument on people's comments elsewhere. Seems to me like his channel grew from that time, which is really sad.
@@BelialTnTn You should see his retarded take on Avatar and The Star Wars Prequels. He's got nothing original to contribute to the critical discussion around those movies. All the shit he says is stuff that's been said hundreds of times before and most of it is bullshit delivered by people who are parroting morons who never understood the movies in the first place. With that said, I will give the man credit for this. He's a published author. Whether he's a GOOD published author, I have no idea because I've never read his work, but at least he's not a useless failure like many critics on UA-cam.
I watch him occasionally. He does bring up good points on production and offers reasonable insights to certain failures. But I have noticed he writes off a lot of things that actually do make sense to those who are familiar with the lore. Star Wars is frequently a victim of this on his channel and others. On the surface something perhaps makes no sense, but in the history of the IP, or the psychology of the character it absolutely works. But instead of researching the matter and TRYING to explain it before commenting on it, he just skips ahead to the comment part because that’s what people want to hear. It bothers me and I sometimes correct them in comments, but it doesn’t help. Any long-standing franchise with deep lore should only be professionally reviewed by professionals who know the content. Knowing movies in general is not enough to know THIS movie or THAT movie to a T.
This movie opened my eyes to metaphorical storytelling in such a profound way. I saw another video on here explaining the ‘mechanics’ of the shimmer and it was the first time I had a strong reaction of “that’s not the point at all!” You did a great job examining the sci-fi & horror from both angles and tying it all together. I think the shimmer is all one big metaphor for grief and your analysis on the self destruction theme is a great parallel to that. The Shimmer [grief] is inhuman, otherworldly, immensely powerful, and unknown. People are afraid to go near it; people who go willingly don’t come back the same. It seduces and amplifies our self-destructive tendencies. Many people give into those tendencies and are lost to the shimmer - for some, it is the peace they want; for others, they fight it to the last. Some return, if they can embrace and accept their grief [their reflection in the shimmer] as a part of themselves. What a great film!
Creation is inherently tied to the destruction of what came before. I think Lena in her final interview understands the shimmer from a perspective outside humanity. There was nothing horrible or wrong in mutation, no one is even really killed- if you remove the moral superiority of humanity in your head.
20:57 This particular melody is so iconic that I've picked it out from random videos on multiple occasions. It perfectly captures the core horror of the story. Familiar yet strange, the timbre has echoes of a brass instrument, but heavily distorted almost beyond recognition, like it's merging with something else. The descending, ascending, descending notes is like a question. Hey, who are you? Repeated again and again until you don't know the answer anymore.
Yes, I totally agree! It has always creeped me out as I think it almost sounds like an animal call, something huge, and curious, and calling to us directly. Then again, the tone makes it sound more unnatural, more planned, one could say ‘refracted’ from an original animal source.
There was also Flora to Flora mutation with the bush covered in different flowers together, and Flora to what I think is supposed to be Glass for the trees near the lighthouse, but I think that's the only man-made material refraction we see.. You could also say it was Person to Big Kaboom mutation that then turned to Person?? to Fungi mutation. 😅 Which isn't a plant! We share a common ancestor with Fungi from 1.1 billion years ago after it branched off from plants, so they are more like animals than plants! Also Lichen (said as like-en) is the combination of algae and a fungus, they are crazy cool~
Thank you thank you thank you. This film (based on the books) seem often misunderstood and I think it was perfectly executed. It IS cosmic horror, like Solaris before it. Glad to see people dissecting it years later. Perception IS reality.
@@FaunoAtelie I respectfully disagree. It IS executed perfectly. I’m not referring comparatively to the novel/s. Just on its own, it’s perfect. The ambiguity of the extraterrestrials “intent” is perfectly executed. Is it to be feared, is it beautiful…does it matter? Is it a malevolent force, or simply a “virus” manipulating genes with benevolence? Is it reacting to our reactions, our emotions? Some met beautiful ends, some seemingly met terrifying ends. The ambiguity is what it was all about. People have a preconceived notion about what an alien invasion would look like. This film shatters those preconceptions and confounds the intellect. Like Solaris, in the end, the viewer is questioning was this person real, was that person real or are they clones? It doesn’t matter, perception IS reality. If you don’t know definitively whether you’re a clone, like in Solaris, does it even matter? If this life force spreads throughout the globe, who’s to say the world is any more “hostile” then it is in its current state? It will have reached its own homeostasis. Like Ex-Machina, which was also perfectly executed but panned by some silly people, it takes the viewer on a completely surrealistic ride, that leaves them exactly where the director intended. Perfectly. So, with due respect to your opinion, I disagree adamantly on this one. Maybe you just didn’t like it?
The final scene where Lena stares into the alien is something else entirely. It's one of the most striking moments I've experienced watching film. The sound design is transcendent, it sends shivers down my spine every time.
The Annihilation book is one of my favourite books ever. I wish I could go back and read it again for the first time. If you haven’t read it please do. It goes much deeper on the angle of the changing environment, Vandermeer is excellent at capturing this pristine wilderness, that is both beautiful and terrifying. The cosmic elements go even harder than in the film, and really fuck with your head. It’s just excellent.
The book series is literally one of the best things I have ever read. I was never a big reader but decided to try the first book after watching the movie and loving it and now I recommend it to everyone I meet. You were spot on regarding the levels of horror. The movies shocked me and made me think but the books turned my brain inside out and shook it.
One of my favourite cosmic horror films! One suggestion/thought I had was the inclusion of the names of which audios are being used. I really found that so satisfying in your Sunshine video, I’ve heard one of those SIGNALIS songs in the back of videos for so long, not knowing what it was. Of course I could have done more legwork myself 😅.
Good point! I almost added them here as well, but the project timeline got a bit stuffed so it became really difficult. I'll try to do this in the future 👍
Clicked on the video and I stopped about a minute in, watch the movie, started watching your video again and realized that I had some reading to do later lol! I can’t wait to start this series of books!
lately, i've been watching channels with a few thousand subscribers. I call them the goldilock zone of subscribers. Not too small for content to be amateur but not too large for other channels to copy the formula(take inspiration). I occasionally find new things to learn from another narrator's perspective. Good stuff👍
Wasnt expecting much out of this movie however I actually really enjoyed it. As someone who loves cosmic horror it has the perfect tone of things being unsettling from the start and it never really gives you a moment to breathe dispite it being a rather slow paced movie.
Awesome video. I finished reading this trilogy earlier and I was very pleased. I also watched the movie before and after doing so. While they are very different, there's still a lot to appreciate in both things on their own. Im surprised to find things I didn't notice before, like the tattoo being present in Lena's arm! I don't think I've seen anyone mention that in other video analysis. Thank you for putting this out there! It was a great watch.
I loved the film and book of Annihilation, but I didn't make it very far into Authority. It just wasn't holding my interest. In your opinion, as someone who finished the trilogy and was "very pleased", should I try again with more perseverance? Does it get better after the first few chapters?
@@Dorian_sapiens I definitely recommend it. It provides some interesting insight on events from Annhilation. It's quite a different point of view for sure, and it DOES take a bit to get into the pace of things. BUT its enjoyable in my opinion.
I loved this movie so much! After watching it with my mom I went on this, like, hour long diatribe about the themes and concepts. When I was tired out my mom simply looked at me and said, "I didn't get it. It was just weird." I was so surprised by her comment. How could you NOT have thoughts and opinions on it!? One of the things I said was something along the lines of, "the alien is simply doing what it evolved to do. It's just surviving, like everything alive is doing. Do you get angry at the bacteria that is making you sick? Can you BLAME the bacteria for doing what it does? You might not like being sick, but the bacteria doesn't know or care about your feelings..." This movie is so great to watch with a critical eye.
As a fan of cosmic horror and sci-fi, I’m ecstatic to see this film getting the love and appreciation it deserves. I haven’t read the novels, but I plan to. The concept of the Shimmer is fascinating and horrifying. And the notion that the alien being’s mere *presence* is what caused all the mutations, and it might not understand itself (therefore it has no regard for the other beings or environments it encounters)…That’s pure cosmic horror.
i just want to say i'm only 3 minutes in and already love the use of the SIGNALIS soundtrack. it's an excellent choice not just for the topic of cosmic horror but for the move/books themselves
The first time I read sections about the crawler and its writings, I couldn’t wrap my head around it, and had to reread it over and over again. Can’t recommend the book highly enough.
The "personified alien" wasn't doing anything, it was just a focused aspect of the shimmer. The entire shimmer is alien, it's an area where laws of nature, chemistry, and even physics interact differently, act according to a totally alien directive.
The fingerprints changing and the tattoo appearing on all members of the crew, and even the bear to some extend, it reminded me of how Dementia erodes your identity until only a few fractured memories and characteristics remain. The loss of self is about the only thing i fear when thinking about growing older.
26:54 I like the idea that in the end neither of them are their true selves because it is masterfully horrific to imagine a scenario where her memory of who she was and where she came from had changed after she passed out. The entity had duped and juked her very consciousness in some disgusting trick to obtain some form of compliance from her. The same is more obvious in her husband. "I thought I was a man- I had a life- People called me Kane- And now I'm not so sure. If I wasn't Kane what was I- Was I you? Were you me? My flesh moves like liquid- my mind is- just cut loose- I can't bear- I can't bear- I can't bear it. You ever seen a phosphorous grenade go off? If you ever get out of here, you find Lena." Look me in my brown eye and tell me that Alien son of a bitch Annihilated itself this way. Even in cases of greatest tenacity, you are deceived and violently obliterated. Its use of these tenacious subjects is, I expect, its only means of spreading beyond the shimmer. It is a violation of life and an abomination. Its destruction is a number one priority by all capable of seeing its nature. Even if its nature is only seen through human eyes.
I would like to look at the idea of this being gendered horror as well- As a woman I have given birth - i have had a parasite living in me- taking over my body and changing it in ways I didn't agree to- I think women have a psychologically easier time with this idea than men because our bodies do this - and then in menopause our bodies change again in ways we can't control or consent to- When I read the books (I read all 3 before seeing the film) I found it interesting that the group of men seemed to have a much more traumatic time inside the shimmer compared to the women- I have not seen an exploration of this idea out there but I find it fascinating
Brother, keep at it! You did a great job on the Firewatch video, I hope that this brings you the popularity you deserve, your videos are amazing. You're a great video essayist
I love how horrifying a concept it is for it not to be that the alien became you, but that you became the alien. it's not something incomprehensible changing itself to infiltrate human life, but you yourself changing to become something incomprehensible
Or maybe she knew the guy before he went in, and they had matching tattoos, As Natilie's character is only there because she also knew a prior expedition member.
She is both the human and the doppleganger. The person that came out is essentially now a third being. Schroedinger's Cat concept but instead of it being binary it creates, as the philosophy of the book and movie put it, "something new".
I always think of it like death. On the surface it looks like we're destroyed when we die, but everything that makes us will remain. Our bodies breaking down, resurfacing as the dirt where plants go, the plants eaten by the deer, the deer eaten but the bear, and the bear... well I have eaten bear meat so I am part of that bear, that deer, that plant, that dirt, and that person that died long ago.
Im not sure if anyone mentioned it yet but there's a scene in the movie when Lena sees deer with flowers branching from their antlers. It's beautiful and magical and maybe evidence of animal to flora mutation?
I don’t know why more people don’t talk about this film among the greats of sci-fi horror. Barely any of my friends have even seen it (despite my unrelenting recommendations). Superb film, highly underrated
“the alien” part of the soundtrack hits such a nerve with me, it makes me feels genuinely afraid and on edge when i hear it even as a stand-alone from the film and it’s context. i can’t even tell what it is about it that effects me so strongly but no other piece of music in horror has come even close to it
When grief truly impacts you, bone shattering grief, it makes you into something else. You are not the same ever again. You are created new, something different and alien to what you were before the grief. After I lost several people in close succession and survived the trauma myself, I changed. My personality is different. My outlook is different. Nothing can be the same.
This tatoo appearing on people who didn't originally have it reminds me a lot of how GPTs borrow from images they had consumed in training, when making it's own creations
@5:23 "...molting: a long trail of skin like debris, husks, and sloughings." Just as an FYI, in this context it's not pronounced "slaowings", but "sluffings" (or, as I like to say, "sloffings"). As in, "the cast-off skin of a snake", "a mass of dead tissue separating from an ulcer", and "something that may be shed or cast off". The "slaow" pronunciation refers to bodies of water. So, that's the noun "slough". The verb variant of the word means the process of producing the noun in the same way that "run" can be a verb or a noun. "I went for a run", "I run". Sloughings, as mentioned in the book, is "sluffings", as it is referring to the sheddings of creatures - typically reptiles/snakes and whatnot. Just a little FYI for ya! Thanks for the video. I realize now that my two girls should probably see this film too, if only for its iridescence and trippiness. My older girl is a non-stop character/world visioneer, realizing her imagination on paper, in digital art, and Roblox constructions that are modeled in Blender and imported and hand-animated. I think that Annihilation might-could be some more inspiration (like House of Leaves has been). My youngest girl will probably just be thrilled by the visuals and action thriller happenings - even though she's a bit of a Kubrick, which came entirely out of left field for me as her father. She's bossy and has story-telling vision. I'd link her UA-cam but I got bit posting a link in a UA-cam comment once before and I don't make that mistake anymore. I guess you can just search for "I Got Your Hat Bro", her channel is named Charlotte - but with unicode characters around it that nobody can type to find her channel. She busted that little video out in less than an hour, bossed me around a bit to shoot it, after 4th of July celebs. I'm like wtf, kid, get on it and make something awesome if you can bust something like that out off the top of your head. Anyway, SLOFFINGZ!!!!!
The book is one of my most favorite reads of all time. Seriously a physical experience of the seemingly indiscribable. And I really enjoy rewatching Garland‘s film over and over.
I adore both this movie and the book. I latch onto anything that keeps me up at night thinking as much as they did. I have Authority on my shelf and still need to read it. I had heard it's detached from Annihilation, so I've been putting it off. The video is great, thank you. I'm hoping this is the push I needed to pick it up and continue the story.
Writing this comment within the first 10 seconds of clicking on this video just to say I can't believe how many people who are specifically into cosmic horror sleep on annihilation so I commend you good sir for doing your part.
10:30 correct me if im wrong but, considering honey doesn’t go bad, describing the smell as ‘rotting honey’ is brilliant for a story abt the incomprehensible
Honey most certainly can go bad. It has to be perfect sealed in a jar and lid it cannot react with. Sterilized glass with purified true wax without contamination. Will preserve honey indefinitely. It also cannot be exposed to rapid extreme heating 3:15 and cooling, once sealed. Unpasteurized honey can contamination botulism and other harmful contamination. As well a Unpasteurized and pastureized honey that the seal has been broken and (knives, spoons etc even if properly washed ) can contaminate it. Honey has some interest properties, but it isn't sterile. FYI: Pasteurization isn't the same thing as sterilization, and even with sterilization, once the seal is broke it is no longer considered sterilized. So no, honey can most definitely go bad, or have things like botulism continually to multiple. Honey can mold, it can separate, crystallize and become a host to other microbials that thrive in a high sugar environment. It most certainly can go rancid.
Reading the Southern Reach trilogy was, to me, akin to what The Biologist went through. I was never quite sure if I was understanding what I was reading, I didn't know if what I saw in my mind was accurate, or if I was just trying to fill in gaps I didn't comprehend. It was a hell of a read.
An aside. Given the actor playing Lena's interrogator here also does the voice work for Alex Yu in the underrated cosmic horror video game Prey, it's my head canon that Prey is sequel to the Anihilation film where Alex and his brother foolishly try to do research on Shimmer related phenomena and it gets out of hand. :) Seriously though, if you haven't played Prey, do so. Solid cosmic horror with the ending twist being a unique approach to how to deal with an enroaching cosmic horror.
Oh I love Prey. Doesn't scratch the cosmic horror itch for me specifically, but I love the immersive sim design. Shame that Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin, would seem like we're not getting a sequel.
@@criticalcoffee Not sure the narrative lends to a direct sequel but a spiritual sequel would be nice. Maybe let them remake System Shock 2 this time? :)
@@criticalcoffee On a serious note there are actually three founders of cosmic horror and three thematic formulas. Lovecraft's version is the most common and the default for most people, where people are helpless against cosmic evils. His creative peer Robert E. Howard contributed a lot to the genre's creation and his take was to violently oppose the horrors even if the fight is unwinnable in the end. Howard's original Conan series is the epitome of this with Conan fighting ancient evils and sorcerers from cosmic horror backgrounds but not understanding what they are. He just kills them with swords. Prey and many other action cosmic horror games take on the Howard motif of challenging the horrors rather than fleeing from them as a Lovecraftian protagonist would. As for the third, that's Clark Ashton Smith who is the decadent artist who created the artistic style Giger later popularized. He wrote cosmic horror that went into really, really adult themes and absolute nihilism and are not ones I recommend unless you're really into some bleak stuff.
I had no idea what i was getting into first clicking to watch this film but it has become one of my favourite films of all time. I must read the book some time.
“Annihilation” and the game “still wakes the deep” were just IT when it comes to cosmic horror for me….dealing with something you just can’t fathom even if u want too is just utterly terrifying and extremely unsettling for me.
Can't speak highly enough about the Southern Reach Trilogy. It's so fascinating. Did you use the Majula music from Dark Souls 2 as background music? If so, well done!
I think the most frustrating thing about the movie is that since the premise of the fear in the story was that we didn't know what the shimmer was going to do, the director had the shimmer do whatever came to mind and that was supposed to make since. It was a strange thing followed by another strange thing followed by,... The end was another kick in the balls when you realize that the bad guy got away! If the shimmer was going to take over the world anyway, what difference did it make?
@@thejustinsteffan Obviously you're only capable of envisioning its execution being dumb because you have zero vision or graphics programming experience. You haven't even seen a glimpse of what's actually possible. You probably think all VR games are limited to looking like N64. I wouldn't be surprised if you've never even experienced proper VR. I don't think I could make a prism render run well on the mobile/Quest headsets (then it WOULD look like N64), but I think I could get it to run fast enough with a PC GPU churning through the diffractive iridescent raymarching operations.
Just to be pendantic in a broader way: In U.S. English, I think 'Lyken'-type pronunciation is standard, but in British English, both 'Lyken' and 'Litchen' are commonly used. I guess my English is tending towards Southern African, and use both interchangably, (like eether/ayther for either). I have no comment on sloughing, because I am very aware that I am unreasonably inconsistent in how I say it; I usually use a 'Sluff' of a more gutturally pronounced 'gh' which sounds much the same, but have said 'Slauw' when it feels more comfortable / if I have a throat infection.
For those who like the novel , look up :Roadside Picnic'' It's the novel Vandermeer inspired for making this series ( Some say 'stole the plot ' from ;)
It should be mentioned that VanderMeer himself denies this. Haven't read Roadside Picnic so can't comment further than that. Garland and DP Rob Hardy have been open about the Stalker influence.
@@criticalcoffee Yes I remember that now. I forgot he said that back then, so I guess doubted it a bit . but who knows ? It feels rather similar, but it's possible.
I'd recommend the film Altered States (1980), directed by Ken Russell and adapted by Paddy Chayefsky from his 1978 novel of the same title. It's a completely different movie in most ways, but it has a similar cosmic horror theme. if this movie is comparable to Lovecraft's The Color out of Space, Altered States would be more comparable to At the Mountains of Madness mixed with a little bit of The Other Gods.
When Lena said "It doesn't want" I interpreted it that this being doesn't have the emotional drives we humans contain, but instead something akin to cognitive. Why did it change the terrain? Was it curious at the complex structures of DNA in the living organisms around it, and how they produced different results in the organisms, such as the flower colours and types from what was once the same breed of bush. Does it want to play with DNA? Get extremes or unique forms that it can't find or wants to see? Such as the croc with shark-like teeth. Or is it testing, researching, analysing the contents of our planet? Such as the bear, with its given enhanced hearing and impressive vocal cords indistinct from a human. Or, even worse. Is it researching humans? Analysing their responses to all this chaos and entropy? Who knows? Humans sure won't
Like Alien the film itself, it could have happened that the alien at the core of the Shimmer was a bio-mechanical weapon between two alien civilizations in war who got expelled onto space by some mistake, one if the factions losing, an accident... Somehow i found that idea appealling and so interesting!!!! Neither the books or the film tell one way or the other.
This is such a cool setting/concept. I swear this has to be the biggest inspiration for the Schwarzwelt in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (14/10 game if you haven't checked it out)
Love this flick I can’t be the only one who thought of the doppelgänger puzzle from the first Tomb Raider when the alien mirrors Natalie Portman? That, or the scene with Graucho and Harpo in Duck Soup? Granted, that’s a very specific cross pollination of influences to someone of a particular age range and taste
Sorry for the long break in videos, I've been busy with real life stuff and playing Elden Ring, I'll try to get the next project out much faster 🤝
One might say you took a ... coffee break!
Those Windows Media Player visualisations were the shit, yo! I definite precursor to my later obsession with psychedelic chemical compounds.
I knew there was Dark Souls II background music in there somewhere!
Did I hear it right that you use the soundtrack from majula DS2 hometown in you vid, love that song
The author said that his concept for the shimmer was based on animals in nature using mimicry to camouflage. But then expanded it to an alien ecosystem.
that's fascinating. i love how simple the original idea was and how creative the inspiration.
@@stars_who_knows9254 Its likely also based on "A Road Side Picnic" or "S.T.A.L.K.E.R."
@@jeffreywelch9360definitely borrows from The zone
Vandermeer's prose is some of my favorite of all time. It's so evocative. I would highly recommend his Ambergris books.
@@DMIwriter True. There are so many details, it reads like a fever dream sequence.
Regarding the "Ouroboros" Tattoo: I have the feeling that you forget is that Time and memories also get refracted in the shimmer. if Lenas literal house can get refracted and created inside of the shimmer, then there is no reason why the original tattoo can't get refracted through time to appear on someone else ...thats the point of the shimmer, I think. all that exists can and will be influenced and refracted on everything that exists. that's what makes it so extremely dangerous and beautiful at the same time.
Warping Space Time? I don’t think it’s THAT powerful..
The Shimmer remixes and corrupts information.
something like 40% of American women have that exact ouroboros tattoo
@@PharadayCage THIS IS WHAT MOST PEOPLE MISS!
Yes. It's "remixing" reality itself. It isn't limited to genetics, it's reading and rewriting patterns of information.
@@alabamapilot244 yeah, people forget that DNA is just a long list of instructions to make a life form. It’s all information.
this movie is one of the rare times where the adaptaion made me read the book as opposed to the other way around, but the southern reach trillogy went hard, the middle book is mostly a bridge and quite hard to get through but provides the much needed context to finish the third book. great stuff
It's an amazing trilogy
@@Christo_Trismegistus SPOILER ALERT
.
.
.
.
.
i love that the invasive shimmer is an automated system of a long dead alien race.
I would highly recommend his Ambergris Cycle books if you liked the Southern Reach trilogy. It's very different. More traditionally Lovecraftian with a Victorian/Edwardian era setting, but with really interesting creatures and mysteries
i love jennifer jason leigh's delivery and portrayal of ventress - creepy, distant, curious
Facts she was the one character I locked onto throughout the hell they go through she's constantly "somewhere else." Like she accepted everything already further backing her knowing she has cancer and on a mission
Annihilation has always been one of my favorite movies. I've seen it multiple times and I always feel I find something new to it. Also for the body horror stuff I find it both fascinating but equally terrifying because to some level I've lived through some more real aspects of it last year. After I had a valve transplant (bovine valve) I had a stroke a few months after. Ironically my husband spotted the symptoms of the stroke after seeing the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly all about a guy who had a stroke and became paralyzed and trapped in his own body. Though I've since recovered due to getting treatment quickly, the feeling of being unable to control your own limbs is extremely terrifying. I can't really describe how frightening it all was realizing my own body was against me and feeling deeply changed emotionally. Such a great analysis of an amazing movie! I may need to give it another rewatch!
Whoa! I can see how that would be terrifying. It's honestly easy to forget how scary real life can be while analyzing fiction. I've been very lucky to never have experienced anything like that.
Thank you for the kind words!
Great commentary! I had a stroke in february and you explained it perfectly how it feels both being unable to control certain parts of your body, but also losing trust in how your body is supposed to support you but cannot do so. I think what most people have in common is the idea that we're in control of ourselves and our circumstances, but stuff like this gives you a really terrifying lesson how little control we have(i.e. our health) And a movie like Annihilation goes crazy with the concept of rapidly experiencing a change in your body without you wanting it to happen. (which is kinda lovecraftian in itself)
Its also nice to read you recovered from it! hope you stay healthy
@@criticalcoffeeAll of the ugliest, most terrifying monsters and devils humanity has ever created are still us putting an easy to look at mask on our fears.
Being stuck in a room with a bear is somehow less scary to us than being in the dark and hearing a low, snorting growl.
When I was little I experienced type of seizure that was different than a grand mal (can’t recall what kind it was). I couldn’t open my right hand, it could only form a fist, I couldn’t remember who my mom was, my speech was jumbled and incoherent. I felt like I was in a strange dream like state. Nothing made sense, and my own body felt foreign. The seizure lasted hours. I’m replying to your comment with this because I both relate to your experience and relate to the feeling of foreignness and change present in this film. The shimmer literally looked like the sky during my seizure.
Feeling like your body is betraying your commands and even feeling like your body doesn’t know what a command is is… absolutely horrifying. I can’t believe this film managed to capture it.
I always took the ending as she WAS the alien. But the alien copied her so well that SHE didn’t know she was the alien. If that makes sense.
I sort of took it along similar lines, but more that everything we encounter becomes part of us, so that whether she is original or a copy is arbitrary; to my reading, she isn't the copy from the lighthouse, but her victory over it is hollow because she is not fundamentally different from it, and it wouldn't have known any differently if it had been the Lena to walk out.
SPOILERS FOR THE BOOKS
Thats almost exactly what happened. They only focused on the first (of 3) book for the film and squished some stuff together, as well as the ending of the film being an incredibly watered down version of what actually happens. But yeah. If you like the film you should 100% read the Southern Reach. Its like a mix of Stephan King and Clive Barker.
@@KingfisherMCfor the sake of brevity, what ends up happening with her husband? is he completely gone and replaced with the alien copy? do they continue to coexist together? I really liked their plotline
@@litneyloxan
Obviously spoilers here
It was a while ago since i read the books but iirc you never see or meet the real husband. Hes already gone through the shimmer and what came back out is basically what happens to her when she goes down the stairs. Its somewhat implied he could be a creature moving through some swampy area (not in the movie at all, replaced by the bear) that sounds human but is some mutated wild boar thing. Thats only hinted at in her thoughts though and its never actually confirmed. She never meets her husband again in human form in any case, hes already mutated by the time the story begins.
Fun fact though, she does end up meeting herself... ;) now go read the books
@@KingfisherMCthe ending of this movie is so bad. It’s such an uncreative and bad looking ending. If that’s what’s in the book, it better not at all feel like the movie. The metal man EDM music video was just not cosmic horror nor interesting sci fi. The whole movie was bad, and the end just nailed that down for sure. If it had ended on her looking into a cosmic horror portal hole/alien then maybe it would have left a good taste. But it just ends up being the most generic and shallow, cgi spectacle heavy, garbage.
All of the horror in this movie is thrown onto the CGI creatures, replacing it with shallow exploration of what is actually scary: the psychological and body horror prodded on slowly by the literal atmosphere of cosmic horror slowly inflicting itself into the life inside it. Just like all life on earth is molded by environment.
Annihilation reminds me a lot of Lovecrafts The Color Out of Space literally about a unknown alien life form that landed on a región on earth and started mutating the environment
That’s exactly how I felt as well. The motivations of the alien is meaningless. It’s basically bringing madness and is beyond comprehension like any lovecraftian abomination.
I just watched that the other day and thought the same thing. It literally seems like he stole the plot from Annihilation to make a shittier version of it.
@@samuelfoisy I’m referring to the book version and not the movie adaptation with Nic Cage. The Color out of Space is a much older book than Annihilation, I always assumed that the author was influenced by H.P. Lovecraft’s work which is a plus for me.
I will never get tired of people exploring the ideas of this film.
I take the ending, of her asking the new Kane if he is Kane, and him saying he doesn't think so, and asking if she's Lena, to get only hesitation, to be less of an indication that she's not Lena, and more of posing the question as to what it means to be anyone at all; even without the refraction and reflection of herself and everything around her, at what point do your experiences leave you as an entirely different person to the one you started as - much as in Lord of the Rings, Frodo never settles back into the Shire; he's still Frodo, but with everything he has been through, "Frodo" means someone different now to who it meant at the beginning of the story.
Another element which I think affects Lena's and (both) Kanes' senses of identity is the time distortion; Lena lost time, at least several days, as soon as she entered the shimmer, and so on reflection, the only way she knows that she is her is that she can remember being her; the Kane at the end knows almost explicitly that he is not the original, but on the other hand, he remembers being Kane, and the Kane who self-destructs presumably is as unclear as Lena as to whether he is the original, except by his memories, so no version can be entirely sure that they aren't the 'real' one, because the very idea of a true version becomes arbitrary.
Annihilation is one of my all time favourite movies, and the books are among my favourites also. It's a real shame there were so many creative differences between Vandermeer and Garland, to the point that not that long ago Vandermeer did an entire livewatch to dump on the movie, that at least in my mind adapted the themes in a way that translated to the screen better than the original books would have. With that said, I cannot WAIT for the 4th volume coming out in October. But it's this video, more than the upcoming book itself, that's made me want to go back and rewatch and reread all of it all over again. Excellent work, subscribed.
Oh wow, I had no idea there was animosity between them. All the interviews I read didn't give this impression. The Google Talks interview with Garland for example has him admit that he did a very loose adaptation and that VanderMeer was cool with it. IIRC VanderMeer said something similar in an interview as well.
Oh well, shame to hear this, I genuinely love both stories and story-tellers. I'll definitely read Absolution as soon as it comes out.
Thank you for the kind words and the sub!
Vandermeer is a total dick. 🤷 While definitely talented, I have absolutely no respect for him, whatsoever.
wheres the live watch? cant find it and im legitimately interested
Regarding the odd form of the movie alien, the fractal patterns used are likely a representation of what a higher dimensional being would look like from our lower dimensional perception. When it forms the humanoid avatar, this is not the entirety of the alien. It is an avatar of the alien created to interact with this world. Think of our world as a fish tank and the alien reaching a hand into it. To the fish, the hand is the complete alien creature from an unknown reality and the fish are completely unaware of the Lovecraftian to them being on the other side of the hand and would go mad if they could comprehend it.
imo the most inspired moment of sci fi, and maybe movie history! I am in awe of that moment with the music blaring interrupting the silence that proceeded it, so alien from any natural instruments, truly great scene!
This is such a good essay. It isnt a summary with themes explained like so many other "video essays". This is a straight to the core analysis and gives insight that I didnt see while watching. Thank you for that.
I remember Critical Drinker's review of this movie and he was yapping on about how the alien didn't make sense and there was no logic to it. And I'm surprised that he was overlooking the blatantly obvious. It's an ALIEN. It's not supposed to make sense. The fact that nobody can get a grasp on what it is, what it's doing, or what it wants is the whole point of it's existence.
Quite typical of a reactionary conservative to reject even the suggestion of something not being restrictively clear-cut and easily understandable.
UA-cam used to recommend me his videos at the time and I used to see something he does every now and then. I was mostly annoyed by his voice to the point I didn't focus much on what he was actually saying. Then I saw his video of Annihilation and I was like "seriously?" Not only his "trademark" voice is obnoxious, what he says is actually straight nonsense garbage, and I stopped watching him. As you said, he main issue with the movie was "what is the alien acting in a non-human way?" It's so dumb it's actually funny.
A few months ago youtube started recommending me his videos again and I decided to see his take on Furiosa, to see if he's improved. Nope. The obnoxious voice is still the same. And the stupid takes are still there. He didn't like the movie because "Mad Max with no Max" and that's his whole argument. And I keep seeing the same kind of stupid argument on people's comments elsewhere. Seems to me like his channel grew from that time, which is really sad.
@@BelialTnTn You should see his retarded take on Avatar and The Star Wars Prequels. He's got nothing original to contribute to the critical discussion around those movies. All the shit he says is stuff that's been said hundreds of times before and most of it is bullshit delivered by people who are parroting morons who never understood the movies in the first place.
With that said, I will give the man credit for this. He's a published author. Whether he's a GOOD published author, I have no idea because I've never read his work, but at least he's not a useless failure like many critics on UA-cam.
@@BelialTnTn You should see his "reviews" of Avatar and the Star Wars Prequels. He just follows the crowd of idiots instead of saying anything unique.
I watch him occasionally. He does bring up good points on production and offers reasonable insights to certain failures. But I have noticed he writes off a lot of things that actually do make sense to those who are familiar with the lore. Star Wars is frequently a victim of this on his channel and others. On the surface something perhaps makes no sense, but in the history of the IP, or the psychology of the character it absolutely works. But instead of researching the matter and TRYING to explain it before commenting on it, he just skips ahead to the comment part because that’s what people want to hear. It bothers me and I sometimes correct them in comments, but it doesn’t help. Any long-standing franchise with deep lore should only be professionally reviewed by professionals who know the content. Knowing movies in general is not enough to know THIS movie or THAT movie to a T.
This movie opened my eyes to metaphorical storytelling in such a profound way. I saw another video on here explaining the ‘mechanics’ of the shimmer and it was the first time I had a strong reaction of “that’s not the point at all!”
You did a great job examining the sci-fi & horror from both angles and tying it all together. I think the shimmer is all one big metaphor for grief and your analysis on the self destruction theme is a great parallel to that.
The Shimmer [grief] is inhuman, otherworldly, immensely powerful, and unknown. People are afraid to go near it; people who go willingly don’t come back the same. It seduces and amplifies our self-destructive tendencies. Many people give into those tendencies and are lost to the shimmer - for some, it is the peace they want; for others, they fight it to the last. Some return, if they can embrace and accept their grief [their reflection in the shimmer] as a part of themselves.
What a great film!
Creation is inherently tied to the destruction of what came before. I think Lena in her final interview understands the shimmer from a perspective outside humanity. There was nothing horrible or wrong in mutation, no one is even really killed- if you remove the moral superiority of humanity in your head.
20:57 This particular melody is so iconic that I've picked it out from random videos on multiple occasions. It perfectly captures the core horror of the story. Familiar yet strange, the timbre has echoes of a brass instrument, but heavily distorted almost beyond recognition, like it's merging with something else. The descending, ascending, descending notes is like a question. Hey, who are you? Repeated again and again until you don't know the answer anymore.
I think preceding it by "We need to go one level deeper" is a direct reference to a Jacob Geller video.
Distortion makes things sound awesome or kinda eerie and strange like in this movie, love it
Yes, I totally agree! It has always creeped me out as I think it almost sounds like an animal call, something huge, and curious, and calling to us directly. Then again, the tone makes it sound more unnatural, more planned, one could say ‘refracted’ from an original animal source.
I think of it as The Color Out of Space meets Apocalypse Now.
Yep, I had the color out of space feeling too.
@@thebendu33 For me It's "A Road Side Picnic" or "S.T.A.L.K.E.R"
And Uzumaki
It was based off of a color out of space actually
@@cierracraven8267 more like inspired by, but yes, i think the author is a big lovecraft fan iirc
There was also Flora to Flora mutation with the bush covered in different flowers together, and Flora to what I think is supposed to be Glass for the trees near the lighthouse, but I think that's the only man-made material refraction we see..
You could also say it was Person to Big Kaboom mutation that then turned to Person?? to Fungi mutation. 😅 Which isn't a plant! We share a common ancestor with Fungi from 1.1 billion years ago after it branched off from plants, so they are more like animals than plants!
Also Lichen (said as like-en) is the combination of algae and a fungus, they are crazy cool~
Thank you thank you thank you. This film (based on the books) seem often misunderstood and I think it was perfectly executed. It IS cosmic horror, like Solaris before it. Glad to see people dissecting it years later.
Perception IS reality.
It is absolutely not perfectly executed, but it is one hell of a good example of cosmic horror
@@FaunoAtelie I respectfully disagree. It IS executed perfectly. I’m not referring comparatively to the novel/s. Just on its own, it’s perfect.
The ambiguity of the extraterrestrials “intent” is perfectly executed. Is it to be feared, is it beautiful…does it matter? Is it a malevolent force, or simply a “virus” manipulating genes with benevolence? Is it reacting to our reactions, our emotions? Some met beautiful ends, some seemingly met terrifying ends. The ambiguity is what it was all about. People have a preconceived notion about what an alien invasion would look like. This film shatters those preconceptions and confounds the intellect. Like Solaris, in the end, the viewer is questioning was this person real, was that person real or are they clones? It doesn’t matter, perception IS reality. If you don’t know definitively whether you’re a clone, like in Solaris, does it even matter? If this life force spreads throughout the globe, who’s to say the world is any more “hostile” then it is in its current state? It will have reached its own homeostasis.
Like Ex-Machina, which was also perfectly executed but panned by some silly people, it takes the viewer on a completely surrealistic ride, that leaves them exactly where the director intended. Perfectly. So, with due respect to your opinion, I disagree adamantly on this one. Maybe you just didn’t like it?
The final scene where Lena stares into the alien is something else entirely. It's one of the most striking moments I've experienced watching film. The sound design is transcendent, it sends shivers down my spine every time.
The Annihilation book is one of my favourite books ever. I wish I could go back and read it again for the first time. If you haven’t read it please do. It goes much deeper on the angle of the changing environment, Vandermeer is excellent at capturing this pristine wilderness, that is both beautiful and terrifying. The cosmic elements go even harder than in the film, and really fuck with your head. It’s just excellent.
Vandermeer is supposedly working on a fourth book.
Did you read Roadside Picnic ? ( It's the novel Vandermeer took as inspiration )
@@spiritualanarchist8162 No but I did see the Russian B&W film adaptation Stalker. And of course the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.
@@ravendelacour1917 There's supposed to be a series (US) based on it as well. Also called Roadside Picnic . But I've never found it anywhere.
The books gave me a deep melancholia, but I can't really lay my finger on why, exactly. Maybe just a slow but inexorable inevitability.
The book series is literally one of the best things I have ever read. I was never a big reader but decided to try the first book after watching the movie and loving it and now I recommend it to everyone I meet. You were spot on regarding the levels of horror. The movies shocked me and made me think but the books turned my brain inside out and shook it.
I didn't even notice the bit about the tattoo before. Nice & trippy.
One of my favourite cosmic horror films! One suggestion/thought I had was the inclusion of the names of which audios are being used. I really found that so satisfying in your Sunshine video, I’ve heard one of those SIGNALIS songs in the back of videos for so long, not knowing what it was. Of course I could have done more legwork myself 😅.
Good point! I almost added them here as well, but the project timeline got a bit stuffed so it became really difficult. I'll try to do this in the future 👍
Clicked on the video and I stopped about a minute in, watch the movie, started watching your video again and realized that I had some reading to do later lol! I can’t wait to start this series of books!
lately, i've been watching channels with a few thousand subscribers. I call them the goldilock zone of subscribers. Not too small for content to be amateur but not too large for other channels to copy the formula(take inspiration). I occasionally find new things to learn from another narrator's perspective. Good stuff👍
Wasnt expecting much out of this movie however I actually really enjoyed it. As someone who loves cosmic horror it has the perfect tone of things being unsettling from the start and it never really gives you a moment to breathe dispite it being a rather slow paced movie.
Awesome video. I finished reading this trilogy earlier and I was very pleased.
I also watched the movie before and after doing so. While they are very different, there's still a lot to appreciate in both things on their own.
Im surprised to find things I didn't notice before, like the tattoo being present in Lena's arm! I don't think I've seen anyone mention that in other video analysis.
Thank you for putting this out there! It was a great watch.
Thank you for watching!
(to be fair, the tattoo has been mentioned by many others as well, but seriously, thank you for the kind words)
I loved the film and book of Annihilation, but I didn't make it very far into Authority. It just wasn't holding my interest. In your opinion, as someone who finished the trilogy and was "very pleased", should I try again with more perseverance? Does it get better after the first few chapters?
@@Dorian_sapiens I definitely recommend it. It provides some interesting insight on events from Annhilation. It's quite a different point of view for sure, and it DOES take a bit to get into the pace of things. BUT its enjoyable in my opinion.
@@saintbullart All right, thanks! I'll give it another shot.
I loved this movie so much! After watching it with my mom I went on this, like, hour long diatribe about the themes and concepts. When I was tired out my mom simply looked at me and said, "I didn't get it. It was just weird." I was so surprised by her comment. How could you NOT have thoughts and opinions on it!? One of the things I said was something along the lines of, "the alien is simply doing what it evolved to do. It's just surviving, like everything alive is doing. Do you get angry at the bacteria that is making you sick? Can you BLAME the bacteria for doing what it does? You might not like being sick, but the bacteria doesn't know or care about your feelings..." This movie is so great to watch with a critical eye.
As a fan of cosmic horror and sci-fi, I’m ecstatic to see this film getting the love and appreciation it deserves. I haven’t read the novels, but I plan to. The concept of the Shimmer is fascinating and horrifying. And the notion that the alien being’s mere *presence* is what caused all the mutations, and it might not understand itself (therefore it has no regard for the other beings or environments it encounters)…That’s pure cosmic horror.
Really enjoyed your video, but the best part was discovering a fourth southern reach book is coming out in October. Thanks!
i just want to say i'm only 3 minutes in and already love the use of the SIGNALIS soundtrack. it's an excellent choice not just for the topic of cosmic horror but for the move/books themselves
The first time I read sections about the crawler and its writings, I couldn’t wrap my head around it, and had to reread it over and over again. Can’t recommend the book highly enough.
The "personified alien" wasn't doing anything, it was just a focused aspect of the shimmer.
The entire shimmer is alien, it's an area where laws of nature, chemistry, and even physics interact differently, act according to a totally alien directive.
The fingerprints changing and the tattoo appearing on all members of the crew, and even the bear to some extend, it reminded me of how Dementia erodes your identity until only a few fractured memories and characteristics remain. The loss of self is about the only thing i fear when thinking about growing older.
Love the quiet inclusion of the DS2 majula theme in the background. Such a beautiful and melancholic piece of music
Even the music is incredibly haunting.
26:54
I like the idea that in the end neither of them are their true selves because it is masterfully horrific to imagine a scenario where her memory of who she was and where she came from had changed after she passed out. The entity had duped and juked her very consciousness in some disgusting trick to obtain some form of compliance from her. The same is more obvious in her husband.
"I thought I was a man- I had a life- People called me Kane- And now I'm not so sure.
If I wasn't Kane what was I- Was I you? Were you me?
My flesh moves like liquid- my mind is- just cut loose- I can't bear- I can't bear- I can't bear it.
You ever seen a phosphorous grenade go off?
If you ever get out of here, you find Lena."
Look me in my brown eye and tell me that Alien son of a bitch Annihilated itself this way.
Even in cases of greatest tenacity, you are deceived and violently obliterated.
Its use of these tenacious subjects is, I expect, its only means of spreading beyond the shimmer.
It is a violation of life and an abomination. Its destruction is a number one priority by all capable of seeing its nature.
Even if its nature is only seen through human eyes.
Came to the channel for the luscious finnish accent, stayed for the absolute bangers of videos, incredible job!
I would like to look at the idea of this being gendered horror as well- As a woman I have given birth - i have had a parasite living in me- taking over my body and changing it in ways I didn't agree to- I think women have a psychologically easier time with this idea than men because our bodies do this - and then in menopause our bodies change again in ways we can't control or consent to- When I read the books (I read all 3 before seeing the film) I found it interesting that the group of men seemed to have a much more traumatic time inside the shimmer compared to the women- I have not seen an exploration of this idea out there but I find it fascinating
14:38 i love Arrival!! awesome video man, pls keep it up 🙌
This was so well-written!!!!
Thank you!
Thank god one of these video essayists actually took the time and effort to properly acknowledge the original novel. My favorite sci fi of all time
Boosting the algorithm before even finishing the video. So far, very nice work 👌
Its an (also) an all female cast movie, which was never advertised as such, and its really awesome, and which almost any body saw :(
It wasn’t advertised as one because the film could stand on its own without having to pander to the smooth brains.
It's awesome just because it has an all woman cast?
thank God! finally an analysis that doesn't just regurgitate the back of the VHS tape blurb. thank you, thank you, thank you for actually analyzing!
Brother, keep at it! You did a great job on the Firewatch video, I hope that this brings you the popularity you deserve, your videos are amazing.
You're a great video essayist
@@mikolajwisal thank you so much
I love how horrifying a concept it is for it not to be that the alien became you, but that you became the alien. it's not something incomprehensible changing itself to infiltrate human life, but you yourself changing to become something incomprehensible
Haven't read the book yet, but you reminded me to do so. The movie is sooo underrated!
I love this movie so much, I have watched every video essay on it and I always find something new to love.
Or maybe she knew the guy before he went in, and they had matching tattoos,
As Natilie's character is only there because she also knew a prior expedition member.
She is both the human and the doppleganger. The person that came out is essentially now a third being. Schroedinger's Cat concept but instead of it being binary it creates, as the philosophy of the book and movie put it, "something new".
I always think of it like death. On the surface it looks like we're destroyed when we die, but everything that makes us will remain. Our bodies breaking down, resurfacing as the dirt where plants go, the plants eaten by the deer, the deer eaten but the bear, and the bear... well I have eaten bear meat so I am part of that bear, that deer, that plant, that dirt, and that person that died long ago.
Im not sure if anyone mentioned it yet but there's a scene in the movie when Lena sees deer with flowers branching from their antlers. It's beautiful and magical and maybe evidence of animal to flora mutation?
I don’t know why more people don’t talk about this film among the greats of sci-fi horror. Barely any of my friends have even seen it (despite my unrelenting recommendations). Superb film, highly underrated
15:59 A “mandelbulb” is a 3d Mandelbrot fractal if anyone is wondering. Fractals are great visual shorthand for “completely incomprehensible.”
“the alien” part of the soundtrack hits such a nerve with me, it makes me feels genuinely afraid and on edge when i hear it even as a stand-alone from the film and it’s context. i can’t even tell what it is about it that effects me so strongly but no other piece of music in horror has come even close to it
When grief truly impacts you, bone shattering grief, it makes you into something else. You are not the same ever again. You are created new, something different and alien to what you were before the grief.
After I lost several people in close succession and survived the trauma myself, I changed. My personality is different. My outlook is different. Nothing can be the same.
25:00 In my view, Sheppard fits into that reading as cleanly as anyone. When her daughter died, she gave up on her own life and thus self-destructed.
One of those movies you can rewatch just for the optics and vibe alone
This tatoo appearing on people who didn't originally have it reminds me a lot of how GPTs borrow from images they had consumed in training, when making it's own creations
That book was an experience for sure! 1/3 through acceptance now!
@5:23 "...molting: a long trail of skin like debris, husks, and sloughings."
Just as an FYI, in this context it's not pronounced "slaowings", but "sluffings" (or, as I like to say, "sloffings"). As in, "the cast-off skin of a snake", "a mass of dead tissue separating from an ulcer", and "something that may be shed or cast off". The "slaow" pronunciation refers to bodies of water.
So, that's the noun "slough". The verb variant of the word means the process of producing the noun in the same way that "run" can be a verb or a noun. "I went for a run", "I run". Sloughings, as mentioned in the book, is "sluffings", as it is referring to the sheddings of creatures - typically reptiles/snakes and whatnot.
Just a little FYI for ya! Thanks for the video. I realize now that my two girls should probably see this film too, if only for its iridescence and trippiness. My older girl is a non-stop character/world visioneer, realizing her imagination on paper, in digital art, and Roblox constructions that are modeled in Blender and imported and hand-animated. I think that Annihilation might-could be some more inspiration (like House of Leaves has been). My youngest girl will probably just be thrilled by the visuals and action thriller happenings - even though she's a bit of a Kubrick, which came entirely out of left field for me as her father. She's bossy and has story-telling vision. I'd link her UA-cam but I got bit posting a link in a UA-cam comment once before and I don't make that mistake anymore.
I guess you can just search for "I Got Your Hat Bro", her channel is named Charlotte - but with unicode characters around it that nobody can type to find her channel. She busted that little video out in less than an hour, bossed me around a bit to shoot it, after 4th of July celebs. I'm like wtf, kid, get on it and make something awesome if you can bust something like that out off the top of your head.
Anyway, SLOFFINGZ!!!!!
The book is one of my most favorite reads of all time. Seriously a physical experience of the seemingly indiscribable. And I really enjoy rewatching Garland‘s film over and over.
I adore both this movie and the book. I latch onto anything that keeps me up at night thinking as much as they did. I have Authority on my shelf and still need to read it. I had heard it's detached from Annihilation, so I've been putting it off. The video is great, thank you. I'm hoping this is the push I needed to pick it up and continue the story.
Writing this comment within the first 10 seconds of clicking on this video just to say I can't believe how many people who are specifically into cosmic horror sleep on annihilation so I commend you good sir for doing your part.
10:30 correct me if im wrong but, considering honey doesn’t go bad, describing the smell as ‘rotting honey’ is brilliant for a story abt the incomprehensible
Honey most certainly can go bad. It has to be perfect sealed in a jar and lid it cannot react with. Sterilized glass with purified true wax without contamination. Will preserve honey indefinitely. It also cannot be exposed to rapid extreme heating 3:15 and cooling, once sealed.
Unpasteurized honey can contamination botulism and other harmful contamination. As well a Unpasteurized and pastureized honey that the seal has been broken and (knives, spoons etc even if properly washed ) can contaminate it.
Honey has some interest properties, but it isn't sterile.
FYI: Pasteurization isn't the same thing as sterilization, and even with sterilization, once the seal is broke it is no longer considered sterilized.
So no, honey can most definitely go bad, or have things like botulism continually to multiple.
Honey can mold, it can separate, crystallize and become a host to other microbials that thrive in a high sugar environment. It most certainly can go rancid.
This movie was so visualy unsettling, Its one of those movies you watch once. I still have yet to watch it again...
Humans to fungi, that one scene in the pool
So cool!!
Reading the Southern Reach trilogy was, to me, akin to what The Biologist went through. I was never quite sure if I was understanding what I was reading, I didn't know if what I saw in my mind was accurate, or if I was just trying to fill in gaps I didn't comprehend. It was a hell of a read.
An aside. Given the actor playing Lena's interrogator here also does the voice work for Alex Yu in the underrated cosmic horror video game Prey, it's my head canon that Prey is sequel to the Anihilation film where Alex and his brother foolishly try to do research on Shimmer related phenomena and it gets out of hand. :)
Seriously though, if you haven't played Prey, do so. Solid cosmic horror with the ending twist being a unique approach to how to deal with an enroaching cosmic horror.
Oh I love Prey. Doesn't scratch the cosmic horror itch for me specifically, but I love the immersive sim design. Shame that Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin, would seem like we're not getting a sequel.
@@criticalcoffee Not sure the narrative lends to a direct sequel but a spiritual sequel would be nice. Maybe let them remake System Shock 2 this time? :)
@@ravendelacour1917 Heh, I interpreted the ending to make way for a direct sequel where we would be controlling one of the aliens.
@@criticalcoffee
[Prey Spoilers ahead]
We already were controlling an alien, silly. :)
@@criticalcoffee On a serious note there are actually three founders of cosmic horror and three thematic formulas. Lovecraft's version is the most common and the default for most people, where people are helpless against cosmic evils. His creative peer Robert E. Howard contributed a lot to the genre's creation and his take was to violently oppose the horrors even if the fight is unwinnable in the end. Howard's original Conan series is the epitome of this with Conan fighting ancient evils and sorcerers from cosmic horror backgrounds but not understanding what they are. He just kills them with swords. Prey and many other action cosmic horror games take on the Howard motif of challenging the horrors rather than fleeing from them as a Lovecraftian protagonist would.
As for the third, that's Clark Ashton Smith who is the decadent artist who created the artistic style Giger later popularized. He wrote cosmic horror that went into really, really adult themes and absolute nihilism and are not ones I recommend unless you're really into some bleak stuff.
Im so happy to see a video essay done on my absolute favorite book ever
I had no idea what i was getting into first clicking to watch this film but it has become one of my favourite films of all time. I must read the book some time.
The „alien“ learned and learned, and finally succeeded in her. It finished his purpose of annihilating and maybe surviving.
“Annihilation” and the game “still wakes the deep” were just IT when it comes to cosmic horror for me….dealing with something you just can’t fathom even if u want too is just utterly terrifying and extremely unsettling for me.
Great video. Looking forward to rewatching the film.
Can't speak highly enough about the Southern Reach Trilogy. It's so fascinating.
Did you use the Majula music from Dark Souls 2 as background music? If so, well done!
Yes! Love the Majula theme, makes me so nostalgic
I think the most frustrating thing about the movie is that since the premise of the fear in the story was that we didn't know what the shimmer was going to do, the director had the shimmer do whatever came to mind and that was supposed to make since. It was a strange thing followed by another strange thing followed by,...
The end was another kick in the balls when you realize that the bad guy got away! If the shimmer was going to take over the world anyway, what difference did it make?
Keep up the good work mate!
They should really make a VR game that explores being in the prism, venturing into it, and transforming and merging.
Dumb
that would be so cool
@@thejustinsteffan Obviously you're only capable of envisioning its execution being dumb because you have zero vision or graphics programming experience. You haven't even seen a glimpse of what's actually possible. You probably think all VR games are limited to looking like N64. I wouldn't be surprised if you've never even experienced proper VR.
I don't think I could make a prism render run well on the mobile/Quest headsets (then it WOULD look like N64), but I think I could get it to run fast enough with a PC GPU churning through the diffractive iridescent raymarching operations.
the alien species reminds me of the copy cat alien from doctor who that he didn't recognize
Since you mentioned you are pedantic:
“Sloughs” is pronounced “sluffs”
“Lichen” : “liken”
Just to be pendantic in a broader way: In U.S. English, I think 'Lyken'-type pronunciation is standard, but in British English, both 'Lyken' and 'Litchen' are commonly used. I guess my English is tending towards Southern African, and use both interchangably, (like eether/ayther for either).
I have no comment on sloughing, because I am very aware that I am unreasonably inconsistent in how I say it; I usually use a 'Sluff' of a more gutturally pronounced 'gh' which sounds much the same, but have said 'Slauw' when it feels more comfortable / if I have a throat infection.
I feel like I didn’t get an answer to your thesis. Interesting video, but felt more like a recap than an explanation of how this is cosmic horror
Chaos and order are both a part of life. It makes sense that we seek both in some respect.
You should TOTALLY READ THE BOOKS, a new one is coming out this October
For those who like the novel , look up :Roadside Picnic'' It's the novel Vandermeer inspired for making this series ( Some say 'stole the plot ' from ;)
It should be mentioned that VanderMeer himself denies this. Haven't read Roadside Picnic so can't comment further than that. Garland and DP Rob Hardy have been open about the Stalker influence.
@@criticalcoffee Yes I remember that now. I forgot he said that back then, so I guess doubted it a bit . but who knows ? It feels rather similar, but it's possible.
The end of this movie is one of my favourite endings of all time
FINN DETECTED TORILLE TAVATAAN and thank you for covering my favorite trilogy and book in such a meaningful way.
this movie makes me appreciate sound quality of movie more
For me annihilation is like stalker but with fear of changes instead of interest in them.
7:29 signalis music, impeccable taste
What an awesome essay and i havent even seen this movie yet. Now i want to.
had to leave a like for one of my fave movies.. actually got me into sci fi. I loved the book even more!!
I'd recommend the film Altered States (1980), directed by Ken Russell and adapted by Paddy Chayefsky from his 1978 novel of the same title. It's a completely different movie in most ways, but it has a similar cosmic horror theme. if this movie is comparable to Lovecraft's The Color out of Space, Altered States would be more comparable to At the Mountains of Madness mixed with a little bit of The Other Gods.
When Lena said "It doesn't want" I interpreted it that this being doesn't have the emotional drives we humans contain, but instead something akin to cognitive. Why did it change the terrain? Was it curious at the complex structures of DNA in the living organisms around it, and how they produced different results in the organisms, such as the flower colours and types from what was once the same breed of bush. Does it want to play with DNA? Get extremes or unique forms that it can't find or wants to see? Such as the croc with shark-like teeth. Or is it testing, researching, analysing the contents of our planet? Such as the bear, with its given enhanced hearing and impressive vocal cords indistinct from a human. Or, even worse. Is it researching humans? Analysing their responses to all this chaos and entropy? Who knows? Humans sure won't
I love this movie so much!! best climax of any sci fi film I can remember, love the sound track, intense!!
Like Alien the film itself, it could have happened that the alien at the core of the Shimmer was a bio-mechanical weapon between two alien civilizations in war who got expelled onto space by some mistake, one if the factions losing, an accident... Somehow i found that idea appealling and so interesting!!!! Neither the books or the film tell one way or the other.
The Dark Souls 2 Majula track really made this video a 10/10 top an 11/10
This is such a cool setting/concept. I swear this has to be the biggest inspiration for the Schwarzwelt in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (14/10 game if you haven't checked it out)
Love this flick
I can’t be the only one who thought of the doppelgänger puzzle from the first Tomb Raider when the alien mirrors Natalie Portman?
That, or the scene with Graucho and Harpo in Duck Soup?
Granted, that’s a very specific cross pollination of influences to someone of a particular age range and taste