Burnwinter wrote:
Segway wrote:
What did you make of Annihilation? Almost unwatchable for me but I loved Garland's previous film Ex Machina.
I love it, one of my favourites from the past few years. Very formal and minimal and it's also a brilliant adaptation of the book it's based on. Combining relationship trauma with "cosmic horror" a la Lovecraft or STALKER was a conceptually clever move from the author Jeff VanderMeer.
Hadn't opened this thread in ages but I saw this and I must pick a fight over it (what are internet forums for if not to take our own worthless opinions seriously?).
I thought the film was unwatchable (other than the spectacular visuals and fantastic scene-setting, which raised my expectations considerably). It left me so frustrated that I actually picked up the book to skim it and determine whether it's VanderMeer or Garland that I should be directing my anger towards. I loved Ex-Machina so I figured it'd be the former.
Turns out the book is explosive stuff, STRANGE but amazing. I ended up reading the entire trilogy multiple times 'cause it's just so good. Easily among my favourite books now.
Needless to say, my take is that Garland deserves to be put on trial at The Hague for what he did to the book: the character assassination of the biologist was particularly nasty, and the way he disregarded the component leading to the title of the work... unexplainable.
VanderMeer himself was pretty horrified at how the movie turned out. At a low-profile Q&A someone asked him what he made of it considering the dramatic changes that were made, and he responded something along the lines of "the best thing I can say about the film is that it has made more people pick up my books!".
