Wednesday, April 4, 2018

In 1996 a book novel was released with the title The Beach, it tells the story of an English backpacker who travels to Thailand and discovers a secret place where a community of backpackers coexist as a cult. The book was a success and later was adapted as a feature film directed by Danny Boyle.

Alex Garland is the writer of The Beach, his collaboration with Boyle started with the film 28 Days Later and the sci-fi film Sunshine, he also wrote the most recent film adaptation of Dredd.

Garland passion for sci-fi brought him to his directorial debut, Ex Machina, the story of a computer programmer Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) who is invited to spent a few days in the house of the tech CEO genius Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) and administer the Turing test to an intelligent humanoid robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander). The Turing test finds if a machine has the ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Ex Machina was a huge success winning multiple awards including the Oscar for best visual effects.

Most recently Alex Garland follows the success of Ex Machina continues his exploration for sci-fi stories.

Annihilation tells the story of Lena (Natalie Portman) a biologist former soldier married to Kane (Oscar Isaac) Army special forces who is sent on a secret mission in the US coastline to investigate with a team of people an anomaly called "The Shimmer". Kane comes back without memories and is the only survivor of that mission. After his arrival becomes ill, the government gets involved and quarantine Lena and Kane in a place named Area X.

There Lena meets Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who leads the investigation of The Shimmer. Lena decided to join Dr. Ventress expedition with other women Anya (Gina Rodriguez) paramedic, Jossie (Tessa Thompson) physicist and Cass (Tuva Novotny) a geomorphologist.

The film explores subjects about life and it works in the same universe of great sci-fi films, Annihilation is a psychological horror film with heavy visual influences from Predator, The Abyss, Alien, Solaris and even 2001 A Space Oddisey. The unknown, the danger of exploring other worlds or more powerful creatures than us. Alex Garland delivers another powerful sci-fi movie, that keeps you thinking after the movie was over. What just happen?

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