Rating: 4.5 / 5 stars

“Annihilation” is directed by Alex Garland (“Ex Machina”) and stars Natalie Portman (“Jackie”) as Lena, a cellular biologist and former Army ranger. When her husband (Oscar Isaac, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”) returns from an Army mission acting completely different, she is brought in by the government and discovers that her husband was the sole survivor of a mission sent in to explore the effects of “the Shimmer,” a strange energy force that is slowly expanding and consuming everything, originating from a comet that crash-landed. Now, with a team of other strong female scientists and soldiers, played respectively by Jennifer Jason Leigh (“Good Time”), Tessa Thompson (“Thor: Ragnarok”), Gina Rodriguez (“Jane the Virgin”) and Tuva Novotny (“Borg/McEnroe”), Lena must venture into the Shimmer in order to find out what happened to her husband, what the Shimmer is and what it’s doing.

Three years ago, Garland directed “Ex Machina,” one of the most original and intriguing science-fiction films put to screen in the last couple years. The film was truly one of the first in awhile that really made one think about what it meant to be human, how much humanity we are attributing to artificial life, and what even qualifies as life and what doesn’t. As it turns out, Garland was also behind another, albeit lesser-known, amazing movie from this decade, as he wrote the script for the reboot of “Dredd” in 2012 starring Karl Urban (“Thor: Ragnarok.”)

While this film does have a slow start, by the time it wraps up, it turns out to be yet another truly thought-provoking, amazing sci-fi movie. The other nice thing to keep in mind is while the film is still primarily science-fiction, it also retains a lot of the horror elements that were shown in the trailer, making this one refreshing in a whole different way considering it is finally a movie where the marketing wasn’t completely deceiving.

The thing that differentiates this movie’s ending with a lot of other movies’ is this one resolves the overall tension while still leaving the viewing audience with questions about the world and the resulting effects the Shimmer has on it. Because of the way in which Lena is able to to deal with the Shimmer and the after effects it has on her, her husband and the rest of the team, Garland is able to really break down a lot of the norms that have been established by alien invasion movies of the past and manages to create something completely new and original.

The performances here are, for the most part, all great. Portman excels as she always does, managing to portray a ton of vulnerability in a performance that would appear stale if done so by a lesser actor. All the supporting players get a surprising amount of development, with the movie doing an exceptional job of establishing why each member of the team has a reason to go into the Shimmer. The exception is Jason Leigh, whose non-emoting and one overall facial expression make her come off as a whiny child, going completely against the psychiatrist that her character is supposed to be.

The crowning achievement of this movie, however, is how effectively it is able to use CGI to establish atmosphere. In a world where viewing audiences are so over saturated with CGI that a majority of it looks completely fake, Garland successfully manages to use CGI to create a really tense and scary new world, particularly with one scene in which of the effects the Shimmer has on the animals of the environment are put to use in a whole new petrifying way that has never been put to screen before.

While it does start off a little bit slow and some of the character choices at points can seem a bit off kilter, “Annihilation” is a breath of fresh air in both the science fiction and the horror departments. There are really great performances, a subtle building of tension to a great payoff and an intense and immaculate atmosphere that is brilliantly portrayed. “Annihilation” is a film that will leave one with a lot of questions, but still feeling satisfied.

Image from Paramount Pictures via YouTube.com