Annihilation - ending is brilliant and underappreciated

A lot of people disliked the movie Annihilation, possibly because it was marketed poorly or because the ending was ambiguous. I thought the entire movie, especially the ending, was absolutely brilliant. A few themes that stand out from me from the ending:Cancer - The main character is a biologist who studies cancer. While she's not sure exactly what happens in the light house, she recognizes cancer when she sees it. Except this is not at the microscope level, but macroscopic cancer. Her entire being is replicated in front of her eyes at an alarming rate. The specifics of this alien creature are unknown, but the effects on our world are frightening: macroscopic cancer, replication, refraction, etc. This is a whole new type of terror.Annihilation and Self-Destruction - The title of this movie indicates an overall theme of self-destruction. In the book, the word "annihilation" was a hypnotic trigger word by the psychologist intended to cause the main character to kill herself. We see again and again in the movie, characters that are essentially causing their own self-destruction through suicidality, drug use, sabotaging one's own happy marriage, etc.Cancer is essentially self-destruction. It's not an outside virus that's taking over. It's one's own body destroying itself. Additionally, the copy of the main character doesn't actually initially harm her. As she explains, it was just "mirroring" her. It's not until she attacks it, that it attacks back.Alien - The main character spends her life peering at the microscopic world. When she arrives at the lighthouse, there is a dramatic change in roles. Suddenly, she is under the microscope. Some being is examining her. When she is asked "was it carbon based?", all she can answer is "I don't know". Which, of course, makes total sense. How is she supposed to know? How can a cell under a microscope fathom the viewer of the microscope? It's beyond understanding.Most of the time, authors create aliens in the image of earthly creatures. Either they are primarily humanoids who think/act somewhat like humans, or they are animalistic (embodying the scary aspects from different species).But Annihilation explores another theme altogether. We are all on one rock that's tumbling around an astronomically sized universe. Our predictions of what else is out there is based on what we see here on Earth. But what if what is really out there is so alien, so foreign, that our minds can't even begin to comprehend it? What if we're just cells under a microscope? Is that not more terrifying than all of the animal hybrid creatures we can envision (which are shown earlier in the movie)?As a human race, we want everything to make sense. We try to come up with answers and explanations for everything. The main character saying "I don't know" is a fitting and very profound answer to experiencing something that is beyond human reason. via /r/movies https://ift.tt/3q0JfbJ