In Annihilation, a strange shimmer is growing around a Florida lighthouse. Anyone who goes inside doesn’t return. The only person who does comes back terribly sick — so his wife, who thought he was dead, decides to enter the shimmer and find out what happened to him.
The movie Annihilation is an adaptation of a book by Jeff VanderMeer which I haven’t read. I’m given to understand that it’s dramatically different from the movie, and Annihilation (the movie) has become so precious to me, I’m not really interested in another version of it. (I’m weird about this kind of thing.)
So when I’m talking about the movie, it’s with zero information from the book. I don’t think that the book and the movie are about the same thing anyway. Alex Garland’s adaptation is its own story. And one thing I love so fiercely about Annihilation is how the story is entirely metaphoric.
I like to assert my Sara’s Unified Theory of Annihilation to anyone who will listen. You ready for it?
All of the woman characters are Lena, the biologist.
DETAILED SPOILERS FROM HERE ONWARD.
Early in the movie, Lena shows her students video of cervical cancer cells dividing. She identifies them as belonging to a woman in her early thirties. I think these cancer cells came from Lena herself. This cancer is the vortex around which the entire plot revolves: Lena’s internal journey through grief and self-destruction, the trauma of the sickness, ruining her marriage, and — eventually — chemotherapy that saves her life.
The first woman to die is the softest, gentlest, sweetest of all the women. She lost her daughter to leukemia. In fact, I think Lena lost the *idea* of the daughter she wanted to have when she got cancer. Cervical cancer meant hysterectomy; she would never have children. At the same time, Lena lost the softer, gentler, sweeter version of herself. What remained were the likes of Anya (a heavy-drinking soldier quick to anger) and Josie (broken and self-harming).
Ventress, then, is representative of Lena’s overarching side as a biologist: the cold, scientific mind who can’t help but be fascinated by the cancer. Ventress is identified as having terminal cancer, in fact.
A lot of the dialogue in the movie feels sort of strange and prosey for this reason. They aren’t real people talking. They’re the sides of the same person engaged with one another in grief over the same problem.
One of the many ways Lena annihilated herself was by entering into an affair, and this is one of the things that drove Kane’s annihilation. His team, too, was likely just a collection of his own sides. Remember how tenderly Kane cuts open his other teammate, as if performing a c-section? And there is life inside of him? Kane had to grapple with the idea he’d never have kids with Lena as well. Kane had to deal with his wife’s sickness, pulling away from him, and cheating on him with a colleague. No wonder he vanished and took on this suicide mission.
The faceless being that Lena confronts at the end is herself. The cancer is Lena. It’s her own cells.
You will also note that the tunnel under the lighthouse is distinctively vaginal in shape. The cave is the womb. Instead of birthing a child, Lena births cancer — a hostile piece of herself.
When we wonder whether Lena and Kane are clones at the end of the movie, we’re kind of missing the point. Both of them are dramatically transformed versions of themselves. They are simply post-trauma Lena and Kane who annihilated, almost to completion, then came out the other side. It’s actually a really happy ending: forgiveness, healing, and moving on as their altered selves.
