Movies

New 'Annihilation' Clip Goes Into The Shimmer

Annihilation clip
By Chris Evangelista/

We're less than a month away from the release of Alex Garland's mysterious new movie Annihilation, and a new clip from the film takes you inside the nightmarish world of The Shimmer – a strange, dangerous area that's slowly expanding and altering everything in its path. It's all very weird and intangible, but one thing is for sure: entering The Shimmer isn't going to be pleasant. Watch the Annihilation clip below.

I've come to accept that Alex Garland's film adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation is probably going to be drastically different than the book. I'm not entirely okay with this, since I love the book and its two sequels, Authority and Acceptance; but I trust Garland as a filmmaker, and I'm blown-away by the cast he's assembled here (Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson and Oscar Isaac). I'm hopeful things will work out in the end.

A new Annihilation clip highlights the strange, otherworldliness of Garland's film, while also selling it as a terrifying experience overall. To access the clip, go to the link from this tweet:

When prompted to "Input Transmission," enter this sentence: "When you see beauty in desolation, it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you." This will bring up the clip, which features Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh discussing the mysterious world of The Shimmer. Some of this is similar to the book, but based on the flashes of imagery here (and previous trailers and clips), the end result is likely to be very different. Perhaps it's best if those who have read the books divorce themselves from the source material and accept the film on its own terms.

For his part, author Jeff VanderMeer seems perfectly happy with the changes. After seeing an early cut of the film, VanderMeer said:

"It's actually more surreal than the novel. There are a couple places where I was like, "I might need an anchor here." The ending is so mind-blowing and in some ways different from the book that it seems to be the kind of ending that, like 2001 or something like that, people will be talking about around the watercooler for years... Visually, it's amazing. I must say that and that's all I probably should say."

Annihilation's road to the big screen hasn't exactly been smooth. Previous reports indicate that Garland's adaptation is so strange and unconventional that it's caused a few producers to worry that the film might be "too intellectual" and "too complicated" for average moviegoing audiences. This lead to suggestions of drastic script changes to dumb things down, but thankfully Garland's vision reportedly remains intact. We'll know for sure how it all turns out when Annihilation hits theaters on February 23, 2018.

Lena, a biologist and former soldier, joins a mission to uncover what happened to her husband inside Area X – a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Once inside, the expedition discovers a world of mutated landscape and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.

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