Watched a couple movies recently. Here are my thoughts, with a few spoilers.
Aftersun, dir. Charlotte Wells
On paper, Aftersun’s premise is almost too simple. A father disappears, his daughter reminiscences. Equipped with a matured, time-tempered lens of the future, she relives candlelit dinners and beach sunsets, billiards and arcades. She reflects upon her innocently biting questions and his pain-tinged answers. Soon enough, the final scene arrives, the credits are rolling. What else is there? What’s the catch?
In my eyes, there is none. Aftersun’s minimalism makes it real. It’s sparse, choppy conversations are far more lifelike than the cloying cliches found in too many melodramas. A dreamily soft color palette and interspersals of shaky handheld footage contribute further to Aftersun’s familiarity. Conceptually, Wells has great ideas. Any movie with a fantastically bad impromptu rendition of Losing my Religion also automatically gains +3 swag points in my book.
However, Aftersun’s ambitiousness is also perhaps its greatest fault. By entertaining too many ideas, it often stretches itself thin and falls into excess ambiguity. Several plot devices and symbols, such as the arcade races with fellow youngster Michael and the father’s broken arm, serve no significant purpose and merely hamper the rhythm of the father-daughter relationship. The rave, in my opinion, is particularly off-putting. Its jarring reentrances and splices, rather than provide chaotic juxtaposition with the soothing vacation landscapes, are more confusing than anything else. It’s difficult to even tell what it is until the end.
Aftersun joins Chungking Express in the shoegaze-movie club. Though it’s certainly not as strong as that film, it’s still a solid effort. 7.5/10
Annihilation, dir. Alex Garland
I started up Annihilation having already heard it been called trippy or disturbing, but still pretty skeptical. I am glad to be able to say, however, that Annihilation utterly annihilated expectations.
Firstly, and most memorably, its atmosphere. Annihilation is downright scary. It is probably one of the top three scariest films that I have ever seen. There’s the famous bear scene, of course, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the found footage scene that comes earlier is the films’ true horror masterclass. Even before the tape is played it feels dangerous, with the ominous label of “for those who follow” implying a bitter end to the original crew. Every aspect of the tape that follows is horrifying, from the Shining-esque music to the sinister, sickly orange lighting and, of course, the tape’s gut-wrenching content itself. Worst of all is the scene’s placement a mere half hour into the movie, as it implies the spookiest is still to come.
On top of several inherently fear-inducing scenes, another large contributor to Annihilation’s horror is its superb ability to construct raw suspense. At its core, suspense, and surprise, arise from the careful suppression of information. This is the idea on which Annihilation is fundamentally built. Garland offers plenty of mysterious phenomena to consider here, starting with the swirling dome of the Shimmer and piling on time distortion, mutant wildlife, and dysfunctional cells; but ultimately, tension arises from the fact that the audience has zero clue about what caused these effects to occur, why they’ve emerged, whether or not they mean harm. Annihilation’s stress is induced not so much by the mere existence of these phenomena but by the lack of knowledge around them, and it is this same notion which creates suspense even in seemingly harmless matters such as Kane’s silence or changing flora.
Apart from effortlessly keeping your eyes glued, Annihilation also boasts absolutely glorious sci-fi scenery that provides Blade Runner serious competition. The Shimmer itself is an astounding creation, as are the enchanted grasslands and crystal trees within. Even the dark alien labyrinth at the end is mind-blowingly detailed and strangely beautiful.
The plot feels as if it has a profound message, but I can’t put my finger on what exactly it is. That was probably the point, though.
This is an incredible film, with a simultaneously unsettling and fascinating aura that I only remember seeing last in Ex Machina, by the same director. Like Ex Machina, I also have no idea what really happened. Even so, it’s one of the most memorable films I’ve seen in a while. 9/10