Once inside the Shimmer, the group observes that time seems to operate differently, and that plants and animals are undergoing severe mutations. The logic behind the all-female team is given the most cursory of nods: Well, the previous groups were mostly military men, so why not? So in they go: Ventress, Lena, a paramedic (Gina Rodriguez), a physicist (Tessa Thompson), and an anthropologist (Tuva Novotny). For no obvious reason at all-if the team wanted a biologist, wouldn’t they have selected one themselves?-Ventress accepts Lena’s offer. Ventress herself will be leading another team into the Shimmer shortly, and Lena, who wants to know what happened to her husband, volunteers to join. But despite repeated expeditions, “nothing comes back.” (Kane is evidently the sole exception.) No one quite knows what it is-“a religious event, an extraterrestrial event, a higher dimension,” Ventress offers.

Small at first, it has continued to expand across the Panhandle, until it now looks like a monstrous soap bubble, colors washing wetly across its surface.

Ventress also explains the Shimmer, a dome-like forcefield that arose from a meteor crash site in the wilds of northwest Florida. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), explains to Lena that her now-comatose husband is dying. The two soon find themselves at a secure facility where a psychologist, Dr. It becomes clear, however, that he is severely ill. She asks him questions about what happened. His military unit had been among the first expeditions into the Shimmer, but he has no memory of the mission at all. Kane has indeed come home, but he is scarcely a shell of his former self. (In a touch that approximates the definition of “too on the nose,” the musical accompaniment is Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “ Helplessly Hoping,” and Lena sees him walking up the stairs to the bedroom precisely as the song reaches the line “Stand by the stairway, you’ll see something … ”) Is he a ghost? Has she lost her mind? But one weekend, as she weeps inconsolably, he reappears mysteriously. Lena’s husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac) is a soldier, and he has been long missing and presumed dead. He wants to know about her experience in the Shimmer, also known as “Area X.” How long was she in there, what did she eat, what happened to the other members of her expedition? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.įlash backward in time. The movie opens with a biologist, Lena (Natalie Portman), being questioned by a man in a hazmat suit.

Annihilation by jeff vandermeer