It’s human nature to want to explore and discover. We’ve sent people deep into the ocean and out into space to see what’s going on around us. We’ve discovered a lot of freaky looking creatures with some amazing abilities, but nothing that poses an existential threat to us. That threat is coming for the human race in the first trailer for Annihilation.
Annihilation is an adaptation of the Southern Reach Trilogy, a series of books by author James VanderMeer. The trailer introduces us to Natalie Portman as a biologist whose husband (Oscar Issac) has to go away on a job. That job goes horribly wrong and he winds up in a coma after traveling into something called “The Shimmer.” True to its name, “The Shimmer” is some sort of alternate dimension or disturbance whose border is denoted by a large shimmer. Taking a team (played by Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Gina Rodriguez) into the Shimmer, Portman’s character finds a reality that is reshaping and rebuilding biology. From what we see, some of the new creatures being born in The Shimmer are both terrifying and decidedly unfriendly.
Annihilation has been adapted and directed by Alex Garland, who wrote and directed 2014’s excellent Ex Machina. Watch the trailer now, and you can catch Annihilation in theaters February 23, 2018.