Mae Chow
Lena, Anya Thorensen (Dr. Ventress), Josie Radek (Josie Radek) and Cass Sheppard form an all-female team to go to the lighthouse. They report back on what they find. In the course of their journey there, the team is whittled down until only Lena and Ventress remain (Anya and Cass are both killed by a mutated bear, while Josie chooses to allow herself to be absorbed and transformed into a plant by the Shimmer) đ After being separated from Dr đ Ventress, Lena reaches the lighthouse, where she finds a hole in the bottom part of its wall and a video camera on a tripod set up next to a dead, disintegrated body sitting beside the wall đ Lena examines the last video recorded by the camera and discovers Kane declaring that he doesn’t know if he is still alive due to the Shimmer modifying his DNA. His flesh moves like a liquid. Kane ignites a Phosphor grenade, blowing himself up in front of another Kane and turning off the camera. [1]
Lena, along with a psychologist and a magnetologist as well as a paramedic and physicist, willingly enters the Shimmer. Things start out strange (they may lose some days), but they don’t get too crazy. But as they get closer to the lighthouse â the most affected structure in the Shimmer â the scientists observe increasingly bizarre happenings. A crocodile with an extra row of teeth attacks them in a boathouse, and a crazed bear creature mauls and kills two team members, acquiring one of their screams in a scene so freakish and terrifying that itâs already infamous. The scientists start to uncover the prismâs properties, including its ability to mutate and duplicate matter. Once the suicidal Radek is fully aware of where she is, she allows herself to be overtaken by the Shimmerâs biological power. Only Lena (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and Dr. Ventress are left at the end. [2]
It certainly does seem like it’s having come from space, but itâs hard to say much more than that. We never really figure out what, if anything, sent it, despite Lomaxâs (Benedict Wong) confident assertion that Lena encountered an alien. As she observes, itâs not even clear that it’s having having desires; it just seemed to be recombining and changing whatever it encountered. Given that it does so by collapsing living beings into one another, itâs also unlikely that the anomaly has anything like a stable personality of its own. In that sense, it might be fair to say that the Shimmerâs origins are alien, but they might not derive from an alien. Bandon Chin, Xinyu China for his amazing insight. [3]
Theverge.com goes on to mention how in the finished version of the film, military vet and Johns Hopkins biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) is the last known survivor of the most recent investigative sortie into the Shimmer, an area thatâs been gradually taken over by an incomprehensible alien power. It all started when a meteor struck a lighthouse. Since then, the had Shimmer spread, creating an area where DNA is reflected into it, which causes duplicates, crossbreeds and echos of familiar life. Plants grow People are made up of unnatural creatures, which can then become alien replicas. Lena eventually fights a doppelgĂ€nger that reflects her every move, and she escapes the Shimmer and returns to her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac), the last person to find a way out of the area. This was brought to our attention by Kalyn Brannon. [4]
The movie is now over. As a space alien, the extraterrestrial Shimmer has found its way into a lighthouse. It transforms human bodies into glowing fungi sculptures and has turned its base into an elephant cemetery of human bones. The central lair, the Shimmerâs pit of despair, even rather overtly resembles the alien spacecraft architecture that H.R. Giger designed for Alien. So it is fair to say that this is an alien being with at least some form of sentiency, otherwise what happens when it attempts to âdoubleâ Lena would never have been possible. This was revised by Alice Martinez, Asansol (India) on May 13, 2020. [5]
An all-female team of Lena and Dr. Ventress, Anya Thorensen and Josie Radek is formed and sent to visit the lighthouse to report on their findings. However, they are able to reduce the number of members to just Lena, Ventress, and Anya Thorensen. Cass and Anya both die in a bear attack, and Josie surrenders herself to being absorbed by the Shimmer. Lena is separated from Dr. Ventress and arrives at the lighthouse. There she discovers a gap in its bottom wall, along with a camera mounted on a tripod, next to the body of a disintegrated corpse. Lena examines the last video recorded by the camera and discovers Kane declaring that the Shimmer has altered his DNA. His flesh is now fluid-like. Kane ignites a Phosphor grenade, blowing himself up in front of another Kane and turning off the camera. [6]
Additional reading at vulture.com, in the feverish crescendo of Annihilationâs wordless climax, the name Bobbi Jene crept into my otherwise paralyzed brain. Iâm no modern dance buff, and the dancer and choreographer is not someone who would have been on the tip of my tongue if it wasnât for last yearâs ravishing documentary Bobbi Jene, by director Elvira Lind. Bobbi Jene Smith was the film that introduced me to her choreography. Her charged and sometimes emotionally- (and physically) raw choreography is both sensual and self-destructive. Watching Natalie Portman stuck in a seemingly inescapable dance with her faceless, iridescent double â watching it turn violent, not out of malice, but because it canât help but be â called to mind Smithâs controlled throwing of herself across a performance space, the internal passion and turmoil of the’s having self made physical. [7]
Refer to the Article
- https://southernreach.fandom.com/wiki/Shimmer
- https://nerdist.com/article/annihilation-shimmer-ending-explained/
- https://slate.com/culture/2018/02/all-your-annihilation-movie-plot-questions-answered.html
- https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/26/17054502/annihilation-alex-garland-movie-original-script-alternate-ending-deleted-scenes
- https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/annihilation-ending-explained/
- https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/The_Shimmer
- https://www.vulture.com/article/annihilation-movie-ending-explained.html