Hmmmm…. my take on this one will likely need to be adjusted with time… as smarter people give their analysis on what the hell this movie even means. On the surface… on the surface its a… umm… maybe there isn’t a “surface” level for the film. It’s a great big grand spectacle of what-the-fuckery that hovers in the arena of gender dynamics. Gender dynamics and body horror mythology/folklore fever dream randomness.

The flick is about a woman who rents an old English manor after the death of her husband. She’s largely alone… except for the random naked dude who stalks her grounds. And the creepy cleric and the old young boy, etc. All these men seem to be stalking her at once…

Aaaand this is maybe all psychological or maybe it’s a particularly f’ed up take on English folklore… or maybe it’s in the brain of the man who adapted Annihilation and this is normal for him. The problem I have with the movie is that, while deeply unsettling, it has the illogical random dream logic of doing whatever the f it wants to do. Are there rules to this? Is there logic?

I’m afraid I’m the kind of analytical guy who wants the horror to make sense in order to find it horrific. Since a lot of the stuff this movie does seems to be at the whim of whatever’s doing it, whoever’s thinking it, or whoever wrote it, I find myself disconnected from the fear. Instead, I found myself trying to analyze the deeper meanings and becoming distanced from the scares. And wondering why the main character isn’t a trifle more freaked out.

That said, I can’t argue some of the imagery isn’t deeply messed up. Just body horror hatching body horror… it’s pregnancy allegory all the way down. And all the way inside and outside and turned inwards and phallic and vaginal and I’m weirded out by the movie theater crew who has to come into this in the last ten minutes to get ready to clean and find themselves facing this whathefuckery.

I respect the effort and find it does a lot of its creeptastic imagery exceptionally well. So I’ll give it a good score but I feel that I might need to raise it if I can get a better take on the material… or lower it if, ultimately, it means nothing. I’m on the fence.

Score: 84