'Annihilation' review: Natalie Portman stars in a powerful, transfixing sci-fi story
"Annihilation," a mind-bending foray into the unknown from the British writer-director Alex Garland, leaves you in an entrancingly beautiful daze.
That may be an odd thing to say about a movie with mutant crocodiles, killer bears and an unflagging sense of menace, but for all its surface perils, the picture also has a disquietingly serene core.
It broods, stalks and sometimes pounces, but mostly - not unlike the five intrepid women who venture into its heart of darkness - it's content to observe, almost as though it were studying itself through the lens of the camera. It gives itself, and the audience, an awful lot to see.
Freely adapted from the first novel in Jeff VanderMeer's "Southern Reach" trilogy, Garland's movie tracks an expedition into a swamp
