REVIEW - Annihilation - THE FILM, based on the Book - something that expands, but is different

Seeing this film within twenty four hours of finishing the book was a good idea. The book left me both inspired and uneasy, and the film adaptation added more depth to the book. The stories, however, were not identical. I don't know if the film draws more detail from the subsequent books in the Southern Reach series. I don't want to know.

If you want to read the book before you watch the film, I suggest that you stop reading right here and now - because it is not possible to talk about this film without spoiling certain elements of the book.

In the film, The cast is led by Natalie Portman, (Lena) who is struggling with the loss of her husband as the film opens. Her husband has gone missing in a place unknown to her, and quickly into the film, he returns, and she finds herself on the precipice of Area X.

Area X is a place that is growing in size, and it has some sort of authorities concerned. As a result, expeditions enter the area in an attempt to find out what is going on, why it is going on, and if it can be stopped.

Unlike the murky, humid world described in the book, Annihilation - the film, is a very colourful and vivid world. But the story isn't colourful, it is dark, foreboding and full of more depth than you would expect.

It is important to note (again) that this is a scenario where the film deviates so sharply from the book (beyond the principal inspiration) - that these two items need to be tackled as individual pieces of media, instead of being seen as two parts of the same whole.

The film does an excellent job adding depth to the character in an immediate sense, making them more relatable. The book does this in a much slower, more measured manner, but the same cannot be said of the supporting cast.

There is not much memorable of the supporting cast, and for a book that was originally written in the first person, Portman definitely has main character energy laser focused on her throughout the whole film.

So much is missing from the film that I loved in the book. While the book only took me just over four hours to read (thanks to my e-reader for that statistic) - I felt engrossed, attached to the ongoing mystery of Area X, and felt like I was discovering it along the way.

The book reminded me of Rama. The film reminded me of nothing else, but I did think to myself, very much along the way - "this movie plot would make an awesome video game".

The film is a survival horror expedition. There's scientific discovery along the way, though this is abstracted down significantly from the novel. That's okay, you can't get everything across on screen, which is why we have books.

Read the book, then watch the movie. Then probably, read the rest of the Southern Reach series. That is what I am going to do.