For the last three months I've been trying to get to the bottom of what Alex Garland's 'Annihilation' is really about.
People who hate, say they don't understand it. People who love it can't really explain why they do.
So I'm going to give it a go.
But be warned: if you haven't seen 'Annihilation' there are major spoilers ahead.
Now the way I process a film is trying to understand what other works or images might have inspired its creator.
The goal, of course, is to get closer to understanding what 'Annihilation' is really showing or telling us.
First, let's look at 'The Thing.'
Now the creatures 'The Thing' are unique because they have the ability to take the form of their victims.
The creatures become a physical mashup of monster and man
a sort of Jekyll and Hyde twisted into one entity.
In 'Annihilation,' the creatures take that mashup cue from 'The Thing'
but instead of taking the physical form of a person, these creatures seem to take the soul of the person.
Consider the scene in 'Annihilation' where our protagonists think they hear the voice of their deceased friend Cass.
Much to their horror, they realize the creature has captured and suppressed the final emotions of Cass into its body.
And those final emotions are the blood curdling screams before Cass' death.
This is the first real clue in understanding 'Annihilation.'
The creature represents the character's hidden and repressed emotions.
That eternalization of something darker buried within.
Let's move onto 'Enter the Void.'
In 'Enter the Void,' we see a lot of hallucinations and trippy visuals of the infinite beyond.
Conceptually, 'Annihilation' shares the same kind of style when staring into the void.
And when I consider the repressed emotions displayed in the creature
and the idea of giving into the depths of one's unconscious
I think that 'Annihilation' is the cinematic depiction of Carl Jung's "The Shadow."
Carl Jung was fascinated with the idea that everyone has a dark side.
An unconscious place where we suppress our fears and anxieties and also our self destructiveness.
That pretty much explains why thee characters in 'Annihilation' are on a suicide mission.
They each want to self destruct and embrace that suppressed feeling.
That unknown darkness inside of them
What cemented this interpretation for me was the alien at the ending.
A literal shadow of one's self.
We've seen this alien dark figure before in another science fiction drama: 'Under the Skin.'
However, in 'Under the Skin,' it was the dark self that was trying to become part of the world.
Hiding in the form of a desirable person.
'Annihilation' takes a more Jungian approach.
It shows how we must come face to face with our dark self, with our demons.
It's like Carl Jung said, "everyone carries a shadow and less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."
And what's provocative about the end of 'Annihilation' is that it champions the shadow, when you let the shadow take over and embrace your dark demons.
That's the only way a real redemption can be made.