@@duckyjoel5373 I believe her conscious was still aware inside of the beast though. Other stories of similar creatures has the person still conscious and aware and able to see through the beasts eyes, but unable to control it or do anything, just watch what it does through its eyes. I believe if they were going with one of these creatures as they appeared to, she is still aware and conscious in that bears head.
@@gundamgunpla4685 oh fuck thats terrifying imagine watching that thing kill your friends unable to do anything to stop it as it uses your voice to trick them
Yes. That's the intended implication. Ventress says to Lena, of Kane's decision to go into the shimmer knowing he wouldn't come back, "don't confuse suicide with self-destruction." And she's right. We're programmed to self-destruct, our very cells are programmed to stop dividing after a certain limit. What this alien is, at its core, is a cancer to the very planet itself.
Alse Ventress had cancer and was strangely drawn to the lighthouse. Was she looking for a cure? Or perhaps cancer was left behing on the planet from previous contacts with alien life forms? And Ventress was drawn to it by the nature of her cancer?
@@moonnightwalk I think she went to the lighthouse simply because that's where the crash happened and the shimmer originated. But I like your interpretation; it's elegant.
Squeeker NATION it's not proven, he isn't bleeding anymore either because they external shimmer doesn't exist anymore and is now contained inside of them. Lena thought if she destroyed her clone she could get out, but the clone was inside her because her and the shimmer and alien were all already one and the same at that point. She was the original and the clone, it was mirroring her, by so extension she would mirror it, that's the entire theme of the movie, constant duality, diverging paths turning out to be one and the same. She's definitely not the original human Lena anymore, even though she is, she's also the shimmer clone. It's confusing as fuck.
I was so sad when Josie "died" cause she knew it was coming and wanted to embrace it so she could go out happily rather than in fear like Sheppard and Anya did.
I personally don't think the clone was trying to replicate the fire. I believe the clone had absorbed enough of Lena that they even shared the same mind at that point. That's why afterwards she touches the ships and the weird vein like structures setting it all ablaze because she knows it must be done. This act further pushes the theme of self destruction. It also explains why she touches the corpse of Kane in an almost consoling manner as she has Lena's memories and therefore cares for Kane. Everything affected by the shimmer is then destroyed except for Lena and Kane for some reason. Perhaps Lena got out before everything was annihilated and anything outside the shimmer manages to survive.
Bill Marion yeah I still don’t understand why the doppelgänger Kane couldn’t exist outside of the Shimmer. And once the shimmer was destroyed he was fine..?
it didn't have the same memories just the same body. Two different things. It was trying to learn from her but mirroring it. It's just like her holusbands doppelganger. He told his double her name and that's how it found her, it didn't know much about her and was confused because it hadn't had any memories of its experiences with her because it only just got born. It only knew what it was told and it was told to find her and her name, which it did. So in the case of the grenade I believe it was trying to learn by handling it. It didn't see it as a two function device because she held it and didn't go up in flames so it didn't even know about what the object did. No shared memories. -1990skelly
What if at the end the lena they were interviewing was infact the alien that was lying at the end cuz when the alien kane asked are you lena? She didn't answer and after they hugged both of their eyes glowed. So they made it past the shimmer and they will start annihilation now.
the water isnt mutating holy shit why does everyone say that, the surface tension of the water on the glass causes that, and it looks like a mirror image. its symbolism for the whole movie
demon212 I was really confused when he said that because I was not seeing anything about the water other than bringing the wedding ring into focus and the difference that Kane bled into his water before and she does not.
The water is there to show that it is her. Unlike her “husband” who started bleeding because he’s never had water. A non planetary host who found a host who already mutated billions of years on earth. What a perfect combination.
Yeah I never thought this had anything to do with water mutating lol. Not sure why so many try to see that, when it's clearly just a bit of symbolism (Water is the genesis of life after all). But above all, it was a trow back to the scene where Kane drank the water and there was blood in it. This was simply her checking if she was like Kane or not. A doppleganger. I don't even think that Kane got sick because he was away from the prism. He got sick the moment he drank the water. He was trying to mimic human behavior, but his body probably didn't know how to ingest water which triggered multiple organ failures. Again, the doppleganger is not a perfect copy. It keeps evolving and adapting and it tries to learn from the original. I think drinking the water triggered his sickness. Hence her reaction when she drank the water. If she was a doppleganger, her body would probably have reacted the same way. Kane's alien doppleganger is part human, while she is a human with parts of the alien mutation within her. In a way, they both complete each other.
This movie needs a sequels and a few prequels. Like honestly, I would love to see what happen in the ocean and what happened to many of the previous teams.
the books do go there. fun fact, the psychologist was the director of the whole administration. the reason her actress's performance was weird was bc the character herself was putting on an act & wasn't good at it
The movie does need sequels, I agree. But the sequels would have to be closer to the books, and given the changes made between the book and this film, it would make it difficult to create coherent sequels. The books are excellent, though, in and of themselves.
There are a few things I think you got wrong. The book covers some of these in greater detail. #1. Ventress didn't go in because she thought something inside would help her, she went inside because she knew she had cancer and was going to die anyway, so taking a suicide mission was fine. #2. Anya's tattoo doesn't resemble "self-destruction", it resembles an infinite life cycle. The snake is in a figure 8 and it's chasing its tail. If you watch a snake do that in real life, you'll be there forever. #3. Before they passed through the shimmer, Ventress put all of them into hypnosis, this is the reason they don't remember setting up camp. The fact that Ventress didn't pull them out of hypnosis for 3 days is the clue you missed. #4. Time doesn't power a compass. #5. Things in Area X aren't evolving, they're mixing. The moment they walk in and noticed the growths on the walls they comment that it looks "malignant" which was a reference to the cancer Ventress has. When they walked into the shimmer, all their cells began mixing with everything else. This is also why Lena gains the tattoo from Anya, or why the bear can talk, or why people became plants, or how the animals have plants growing from their bodies. The cells of every living creature in the area are bounced around the entire area mixing with everything and vice-versa. #6. When Lena finds the source of the shimmer and her blood mixes with it, it creates a copy of her. The copy wasn't learning from Lena just because it copied her movements, it IS Lena, it knows everything she knows and moves like her because they share the same brain and knows how she will move. Even when their backs are to each other they move the same. If the copy was learning from her, how can it predict her movement while blind? #7. The water wasn't mutating.
why did the copy hold the flash grenade if it also had all the same thoughts and memories, it would know what was going to happen next. wouldn't it at least sense the danger or know what the device is and its propose???
@@manican4620 Not really, snakes eat things whole than digest over time, they dont chew so the snakes own body type prevents it from eating itself. They grab prey in their jaws and use the muscles to work it down their throat while moving the the body forward.
I’m going to have to disagree on what happened to Ventris. I believe she was already a doppelgänger shifting into final form when Lina walks through the portal and sees her sitting which is why she didn’t have eyes when we first see her, but by the time she turns, her face is fully formed. But she has cancer, so the shimmer didn’t want her form or cells and left her body in the flash of light after it saw Lina there. Then it took Lina as the form to return from the shimmer.
no you were wrong and just see the scene again it was not the clone but Ventris herself, In the scene Ventris says that she found the shimmer and it entered its body and had integrated with her and later disintegrated or were absorbed by the shimmer
You're forgetting that in the beginning when Kane drank the water blood came out, but when Lena drank it nothing happened. Imo this was to show that Lena was the real Lena, whereas Kane was the mutation.
Matt P. No I think the reason why she didn’t have blood coming out from drinking was because the shimmer was already collapsed. Don’t forget that Kane also got better after the shimmer is down. When the shimmer is down, it stops cloning and all the effects. The clone Kane was bleeding and the was probably because the outside world environment is completely different than in the shimmer.
Yes it shows you that the Kane that returned was the mutation. Lena was also the mutation as her body is being refracted so one is still a human mutation and one is the copy. This is the way I saw it does not mean i am right lol
Gotta disagree. I think it just confirms that it was the Shimmer's continual, accelerated refraction that was making Kane ill. I mean if the doppelgangers have a water intolerance, kane would've died (or at least have still been sick) as he was hooked up to fluids.
Here is my theory. The glass of water at the end of the film wasn’t mutating, it was a foreshadowing that she was a reflection of the original Lena the same way the image of her hand is reversed through the glass of water. An identical shot at the start of the film involved Cane’s hand, foreshadowing his true identity. Now as far as the whole Shimmer Lena goes. I think the switch happens earlier in the scene, when “Lena” tries to escape the cave and sees the being suddenly in front of her, whom I believe is the Real Lena as seen by Shimmer Lena. This makes sense a because while the audience is lead to believe the Shimmer Lena somehow teleported ahead, this is actually all from Shimmer Lena’s point of view, chasing after Real Lena. Real Lena tries to prevent Shimmer Lena from escaping, which results in a brief fight. Once it’s obvious none will get the upper hand, Shimmer Lena gives Real Lena a grenade who then resigns herself to her fate. The reason I believe this has to do with Lena feeling indebted to Cane because of her infidelity. The film establishes that Real Cane calmly commits suicide (self-destruction), meaning Real Lena has no reason to survive the journey anymore since the man who came to her house at the start of the film wasn’t her husband. This is reinforced by how the metallic doppelgänger, whilst peacefully dying by fire, tenderly caresses Real Cane’s charred remains before destroying the lighthouse, in essence Real Lena dying at her husbands side. It could be wrong, but this makes the most sense to me.
Pretty sure Lena didn't drop blood in the water like Cane did. Cane being the doppelganger bleeds into the water and nearly dies from it where as Lena easily accepts the water. I do believe the glass of water does have a double meaning, you're right that they are refracted from their old selves, both different than their former selves.
There;s no way, notice how the grenade instantly killed kane? She would as well where the copy obviously lasted longer. The rest I have no clue but being human she would not have lasted that long.
@@DjPolarMusic That is also true, but keep in mind that Kane's clone also got a lot better instantly as soon as The Shimmer was destroyed. That could indicate that with The Shimmer being gone, the two of them can adapt to Earth's surroundings and live normally among the regular humans.
The reasons for each person entering the shimmer changed their outcomes. josie- someone who engaged in self-harm to feel alive. when she arrived at the flower fields she was able to see beauty which gave her the feeling she was seeking; she then became the flowers that gave her that feeling. ventress- a woman with cancer who was resigned to her fate. She was determined to finish the mission as she knew her time was limited. when she finished the mission of getting to the lighthouse she was able to let go and die. she took fate into her own hands instead of shrivling up due to cancer. katie- a person with addiction and drug issues. her mind was her downfall. she was the first to lose her sanity which is indicative of her mental state as an ex drug addict. lena was able to leave the shimmer because she needed to live for kane. kane was unable to leave because he was in the shimmer too long and lost his mind, so he sent a duplicate of himself to re-unite with lena. sheppard's fate was the most tragic. she entered the shimmer because her child died from leukemia; something she had no control of which left her feeling empty. she died from a wild animal which reflects that lack of control of her own life.
Just imagine Cancer cells, as Aliens. That's the movie in a nutshell. Earth = Human body Cancer = Aliens It might even be a direct movie metaphor, but that's unconfirmed, so it's mostly just as a comparison.
Except Lena essentially purged the cancer - her 'Shadow side', thematically, by not running from it but facing it. So perhaps she is only left with beneficial effects of the Shimmer.
@@squamish4244 You could say she has integrated her shadow.It's the opposite for Kane; he has been devoured by his self-destructive tendencies and is now a husk of his former self. Their reunion is pretty tragic from that perspective.Essentially, Lena is forced to accept and live with the fact she became her husband's undoing.
The sloth bear tracking the others is one of the saddest things ever. As Josie describes the bear as taking on part of shepherd's mind (not just voice,) the bear tracked them not to emulate the voice and lure out "prey" but was literally calling out for help and looking for its (shepherds) friends. That is why it didn't attack, it was nuzzling the tied up crew based on shepherds need to be with them.
@@eccomi21 No. It lightly bit Josie on the shoulder yes but it let go n stood there for a while until Anya went in guns blazing provoking it too attack
I like your interpretation, it's a very cool idea but at the very least the bear's conscienceness isn't only Shepherd. The bear eventually bites one of the scientists on the shoulder and you can hear her start screaming. Her scream gets louder over the course of a few seconds as the camera shot changes which implies that the bear is biting softly and then harder and harder even though we don't see it directly. So unlike Syrus Angi suggesting that the bear wasn't trying to hurt the scientist by biting her, I think the bear and Shepherd were sharing a conscienceness. Even though the Shepherd part wanted to find her friends and maybe comfort them with a soft bite, the bear part takes over and tries to consume them.
That is _so_ much worse than it just being an integrated lure for hunting. I... I have maybe only heard of such a thing maybe twice before, and once it was in Lovecraftian horror.
FYI, the Shimmer isn’t another dimension. It’s more like a bubble that rests upon the Earth and has been expanding ever since it landed on Earth. The alien lands, the physical Shimmer wall expands, and everything inside it begins to mutate. When they cross over the Shimmer Wall, they aren’t entering another dimension, they are entering an altered portion of the planet, a mutated forest that exists physically on Earth.
@Black Santo Nino Time distortion is just memory loss from the mutation. You could say the body adapted to the point where their memory worked again or that she just doesn't remember their entire time in the bubble. From a movie point of view, we see everything in sequence but there may be big gaps in between that she simply doesn't remember.
@Black Santo Nino I think it was more-so their concept of time being distorted than time itself. Time was still going by as it normally would, but how the team perceived time was altered and manipulated by the shimmer.
@Black Santo Nino Time is not distorted. People with Alzheimer's just can't remember but thier cells are being changed. And as for the shimmer, think of it as an EMF of a different frequency that Earth's lifeforms are altered and the alien itself is looking for a host. This scene was nicely done by the way.
Simon Dimock, I compared it to Chernobyl. Everything within a radius of the destroyed nuclear power plant was altered by its radio active effect. Similarly here, all the genes in the vicinity of the crash site were affected by the alien genes which they then carried farther and farther causing the area to grow.
The metallic clone is purposefully burning everything down, it is not an accident. If you watch it again you can clearly see that it intentionally touches everything to burn it all down, so it means the alien acquired Lena's conscience and is acting self-destructively as a result.
@@ayagoto6251 It touches Kane's remains and its shoulders slump - I see it copying Lena's feelings. It hardly seems to notice the fire; it just acts like it's grieving how it destroys everything it makes.
@@sage7149 8:47 it says cane. So please dont correct someone if youre gonna be wrong too. I think its probably a spelling mistake but i dont care i find someone being named after an object hilarious
@@tntcake6327 I’m sorry my sarcastic joke about a kinda niche tabletop role playing universe wasn’t understood. I in fact wasn’t correcting but was referencing the first vampire in the Vampire the Masquerade tabletop game series, which is part of the greater lore of the World of Darkness setting. I apologise for ruffling any feathers with my niche and very indie reference. My form of sarcasm doesn’t translate well IRL so it can’t be expected to translate over a TH-cam comment.
I don’t think it’s a trumpet, it’s just a bassy synth patch. I think the guy who did it played keyboards for Portishead; it has the same surreal sound as that band.
Yes, Arrival immediately came to mind. Upstream Color, Solaris and 2001 also come to mind. But the plot seemed loosely close to "The Invasion", where supernatural dna mixed with ours and evolved us into different beings.
The movie reminded me of a VERY bad trip I had once (we're talking writhing around on a hospital bed at 2 AM) and should have come with a trigger warning label for a "Bad psychoactive substance experience". LOL
The scene at the dinner table where Lina slowly pulls her hand back from Kane’s and you can only see their fingers in the glass is foreshadowing. You can’t really tell where one’s fingers end and the others begin. The glass and the water are REFRACTING the light (the very image/appearance) of their hands, foreshadowing the fact that the shimmer is also a prism that refracts, blends, and corrupts light (but also DNA, geometry, memories, time, and basically anything that follows a discernable pattern/plan).
thats exactly what the shimmer is. Its existence is to refract everything that is inside of its aura. Can't really define it as an entity, its more like its a wormhole or a blackhole.
That's exactly what the author tried to develop. I'm a geologist, mineralogy specialist, so I have my deal with crystallography and when they started talking about refraction, the implications of the shimmering acting as a reality refractor, the same way an anisotropic material difracts light, were pretty clear. The fact is, it's sort of hard science fiction, because without optical physics knowledge people just talk about mutations, evolution, DNA and other biology-related processes which are clearly not what is happening in the shimmer.
I have a feeling it's so confusing because it's all not the actual story of what occurred in the shimmer, it's being told my lena technialy but it's either her clone or an altered version of her so the thing could be telling something that's not the truth to ensure the humans don't know what's happening
@@agravemisunderstanding9668 the book is COMPLETELY different from the movie and wouldn't spoil anything about the mystery. I watched the movie, then read the book, then rewatched the movie and only the barebones concepts are the same
I found this theory in Reddit hope you guys like it. "Here's my (admittedly unfocused) pseudo-theory. I should also point out that I have not read the novels; but I think Alex Garland took his own path for the messages and ideas. Kane told his doppelganger to find Lena. He went back to the house, but he didn't ask, "Are you Lena?" until the end of the film. Lena, up to that point, was a product of self-destruction. Only after her change inside the shimmer, only after facing her doppelganger and realizing she did not want to self-destruct anymore, was she now "Lena." Kane, unfortunately, did not have that strength. It was the better of each of the two that made it out. The entity needs Lena to fully integrate into its new world. Much like Josie experienced, acceptance of what is happening can create beauty. Fighting against it creates something horrible. Lena needed a Kane that didn't have the destruction and deterioration that their marriage had. A fresh start, if you will. It became a symbiotic pairing. Cass needed to be a part of something again after her daughter died. So she became a part of the creature. Anya needed to know the truth. She found it. Ventress needed to see what was at the center. She became one with it. Josie needed to feel life. She became a part of the same flora as an entire town. Lena needed to save Kane. So she became the Lena he went out in the world to find. It didn't destroy. It made something new. I think what the Shimmer did is it took out the part of our genetic makeup that was predisposed to self-destruct. Annihilation of the human condition."
I agree with you. In physics Annihilation doesn't mean to destroy necessarily. It is the act of making something new out of old materials, the old materials are destroyed in the process but it's more about creation rather than destruction.
The one thing I still don't understand is how tf did the Kane doppelganger get out of Area X and travel all the way to Lena's house without any complication whatsoever, despite all the military and scientists surrounding the area monitoring it 24/7.
Best comment here finally someone with a brain... only thing I can think of is whatever this thing is.. it’s beyond our comprehension, time , matter , space, and etc. and has some type of intelligence.. bc went back to get wife and now there is a man and woman at end.. I guess it teleported there. So that just shows it is not stuck just to that field of whatever, idk. If this is making since. But just seems strategic.. and pretty much it created it’s own Adam and Eve at the end.
It's implied they can teleport. Kane's doppelganger says in the beginning "I was at your door" with no idea how he got there. Then we see Lena's alien teleport from the underground area to the lighthouse.
@Conal Wheeldon [Student] 8 read the entire trilogy, and I'm still not sure what on earth it's about. Lena sure has one heck of a different fate, though.
I wondered that too but decided I'd throw it in the "suspension of disbelief" file and ignore it. I find it best not to question Hollywood creations too deeply. 😉
the scp foundation would do the same, sending in d class members with a go pro probably connected to their head or even a camera that is producing live footage. they wouldnt really approach very differently
@@silverbro13 Yes... after sending in D class to observe and learn about it... Have you ever read any of the SCP's when they encounter location-based anomalies? Standard procedure.
I have read or listened to most of Lovecraft's stories, wishing in vain for years that someone could finally manage to make an adaptation of his ideas that didn't totally suck. Event Horizon was amazing, but this movie is the closest I've come yet to seeing Lovecraftian weirdness correctly adapted to the big screen. And it's absolutely incredible.
Check out the film adaption of ‘Colour Out Of Space’ basically the same premise as this film and executed really well. I give this a 6.5/10 and Colour a 7/10
Could we even say for example if I swallowed a plant seed from a watermelon before I went in the shimmer. do y’all think it would also grow within me as well ?
DMT trips make this movie look like a public library in comparison. forgetting you ever lived as a human while being out in the endless space of your brain and its creations is by far the most insane thing i think a human can witness besides death. i saw colors that do not exists in our visible spectrum and cant remember what they look like once i come out, the Geometry and symmetry of the visions are also beyond comprehension. you forget the moment you come back, you have it for a moment and it fades by the second since brain not on DMT cant comprehend what you saw. seeing with your mind instead of your eyeballs is the craziest thing ever. no matter how many times you do it you cant prepare yourself to forget. every dmt trip that takes me to eternity/the void i completely forget ever living while im there. im just content with being there for eternity. it feels like i have always been there and will be for ETERNITY and actually grasping how long that is. full comprehension of infinity and being content with it. no human in normal human brain state would be ok with that, i give the stongest of minds 500 years tops before they would want out. but DMT brain you IS there for eternity and is just cool with it. all that comes there with me is my energy, not my name not my body. whatever make me who i am is what goes to the void on a dmt trip. and that part of you can endure eternity and embrace it. you need really pure stuff and have to inject it to get that effect i think. blasting off when i smoked it was insane but i tested injecting it because a chemist made it who showed me his degree and his looked different than any other dmt i ever saw. not opaque dust, it was transparent to an extent with a crystal structure and it was white but under a microscope it was like milky white mini crystals (chem guy had a cool microscope with a screen) and could not be in sunlight and had to be kept in a freezer or it would rapidly decay in purity he said. my boy stuck it in my foot vein because it comes on so fast had i done it myself ide have been gone with that thing still in my foot and probably rolled around. im terrified of needles so it was an experiment. but it was unexplainable/cannot be remembered vividly at all/ and when i came back it was like seeing earth for the first time but as a grown man and not a baby. i WOULD NOT recommend it to anyone unless it was made by a chemist that legit spent years upon years doing nothing but studying chemistry at a university. i could make dmt but it would be yellow powder looking stuff, and it wouldnt take very long, for whatever reason DR, chemist took 5 weeks to make what went in my foot, and it came with a free mini ice cooler stored in some weird glass vial thing surrounded by ice. again would not recommend unless you want to forget you ever lived...meaning that five minutes or however long it was does feel like infinity. also you hear sounds so loud that they would deafen you but since its just your brain and not actual sound it just vibrates you down to your soul. idk imagine a nuclear bomb going off inside your brain. thats what happens when you do what i did. to say i was humbled or scared or happy are all understatements. you feel the most powerful emotion you can possibly tolerate and that emotion is also forgotten after you return. my names mike and that's how DMT feels when you inject it in your foot and it was made by a chemist. the best way i think to help someone understand is to ask them describe how the color green or red look to a blind man. explain a color to a blind man. it cannot be done youll just keeping saying the colors name, or name objects that are that color. but you cant explain what it looks like. that's how DMT works, but you're the blind man and dmt can explain it perfectly.
Some spoilers for the book! I enjoyed this movie. I liked the cosmic horror aspects involved. If you also enjoyed the movie I would highly recommend the books. While the books are written differently to your typical story (annihilation written as a journal) this just plays into how unexplainable the shimmer is. The book also differs from the movie in many ways (spoilers ahead). While in the movie there is an explanation as to how the shimmer appears, in the book it is explained that the shimmer just showed up one day and tore through a small town near the coast. The source of the shimmer in the book also seems to be a mysterious tower that wasn't there before the shimmer appeared not the lighthouse (though the lighthouse is relevant in the story). Another notable part of the story is that the group that goes into the shimmer aren't known by name rather by profession (Lena is known as the biologist). A big part of the movie that isn't the same in the books is how their cells are altered. In the book Lena accidentally inhales some moss spores from inside in tower. She doesn't tell the others. She feels the spores having an effect on her body, but when checking her cells finds nothing. My favorite part about the book is how you're given facts and hints about what the shimmer can do, but in the end you have no idea what's going on. That coupled with the fact that our narrator could be unreliable (again seeing as the book is written as a journal) makes you uncertain of everything. I feel like the movie never captured this feeling, but it was still enjoyable none the less.
While watching the movie, whenever they got close to any fungal structure I was like "it could RELEASE SPORES YOU DUMBASS". Like, what kind of scientist would get near a highly replicable and possibly hostile bio-structure??
The lighthouse died because of the alien that spread the fire as it refracted it burning the lighthouse acting as the hose for the place that burns everything else
I think both are valid. As Josie clearly is turning full on plant. And it was stated that the 'town' they were in was being evacuated; I think both statements are true
I don't think the water that she drunk from in the interrogation mutated, it was a close up to show you she wasn't in the same state as her husband. When he drank from a glass of water you saw his blood in the water.
I had the same feeling. I want more in-depth analysis as to why it's thought otherwise. It seemed obvious that it was a recreation of her husband drinking water
I think the focus was on the reversed image seen through the water, further reiterating the prism theme. This indicates either she has changed, or she is a copy of the original. Much like the reversed image of her husband's doppleganger through the glass of water, when he was sitting at the table.
Anthony Hayes yes. I think it also had another purpose for the character. It was her way of making sure she was still human. When Kane drank water, there were blood drops in it. So maybe the close up was to show that there is no blood in her water therefore she's ok AND uses the refraction of her hand to indicate that she's changed nonetheless.
As I said in the previous thread above, I believe the water at the end was to remind us of an earlier scene when she gives her (shimmer) husband a glass of water and they zoom in on the glass, showing their hands refracted and undefined, similar to how the shimmer refracts cells.
I think the movie/shimmer represent depression or loss/change of some kind. The 5 characters represent the 5 paths one can take when battling depression and loss. One, Cassie: she lets her loss define her and when she is taken by the bear the thing that remains is her scream, her loss. She lets it take over. Ventress: she wants her end to come and she welcomes it, in a way she gives up. Gina: she lets it drive her crazy and loses herself completely, similar to how Kane lost his identity and decided to give up. Natalie Portman: sorry forgot her name lol, she arguably goes through all the stages but she is the one that fights the most, she’s the warrior that was changed by this battle. Cass: cass decides to embrace the loss and almost become at peace with her loss/depression and changes
it can also be Ouroboros the symbol of infinity though i certainly haven't heard of it meaning self destruction before and i believe both infinity and eternal could fit into the meaning better
Yeah but like isn't THIS whole thing then a metaphor for cancer, and in that, for humanity itself? We are just spreading and spreading (okay yeah we die but does that really matter when the population of earth has grown +1billion in just the last 20 years??) and nothing can kill us / destroy us as a whole, not really, because we're at the top of the foodchain. We are so resourceful that we do inexplicable things (Olympics, eating the hottest pepper, you name it lol) just beacuse we're bored, or just because we can, and WE on the other hand, CAN kill anything. Mostly each other. So on that note, I think that's what would also happen to _anything_ if cells didn't age. It would be chaos, okay, yeah, it was beautiful in that small area where all kinds of flowers grew at the same time but in the long run they'd need space, and more of it; with natural selection out of the question, everything would just start fighting for territory. That's Nature in general, then imagine what would happen if all of it would just. Grow. All the time. ... Well, though, I guess if Space is infinitely expanding, there would be choices :'D
I’m guessing “Ventress” was derived form the Latin word “ventris”, which means “body, belly, or abdomen”. It makes perfect sense when you see what happens to Dr. Ventress at the climax of the film 🙂
this movie did so much right were many before failed. - putting in a full female cast and don´t make a big thing about it - cosmic horror at its best - movie monsters done right - perfect music score I really appreciated that
Kane was def a double from the shimmer because he lit himself on fire with the phosphorous grenade. lena is still human but took some shimmer refraction of her own dna. "half human half shimmer"
@@anonymous4244 depends on which gene is dominant if there even is one but I’m guessing the shimmer gene would be dominant so the kid would be 100% shimmer and that’s how they’ll invade the earth
It still doesn’t make sense why he was dying from organ failure, than suddenly not after the shimmer was destroyed. I think the producers just gave up and just ended it like it was because they couldn’t find any way for the movie to end making sense.
Cancer is the same thing as the shimmer, it literally expands infinitly even if the host is dead the cancer will spread. People don't think about that part, but yeah cancer still spreads unless you burn it like the process of cremation.
Yeah, that what bugged me too. Cell death does lead to aging, but it's necessary, otherwise every cell would be cancerous. So this, along with other themes made this film jumbled and self-contradictory
This is actually a theme in the book, where more people have returned from area X. These people die of multiple cancers, as all their cells start to behave like cancercells. It is explained that the mortality of cells is actually necessary. I don't think the movie explains this so well. It takes a lot of left turns from the books in many aspects, and not always for the best.
That's not how cancer works. Cancer is caused because the genetic limit in the cell that stops them from reproducing too much, has been damaged or altered. Causing the cell to divide uncontrollably. A cell that does not age but continues to divide at a controlled rate just like in normal life will not be the same as cancer. An unaging cell is still just a cell. A genetically damaged cell is a cancer cell. That's the key difference.
This movie was visually FANTASTIC. The shimmer and the shimmer creations were beautiful, especially the colorful flora AND the ice trees by the beach. I just loved that so much. Also the screaming bear was TERRIFYING.
11:40 My first thought about the bear being able to mimic the dead girls voice was a mutation from a bird or something as many birds have an incredible ability to almost perfectly mimic other sounds. Like the bear had a mutation to draw out other humans with the mimic'd voice of another human screaming for help. The reason the movie gave, made less sense to me.
C_Dubbzz * it’s supposed to imply the bear stole the voice as it killed the woman - just as it’s insinuated the alien “stole” Lena’s voice when it “killed her” (I think when she gets crushed on the door trying to escape is when she dies... because then she wakes up and the way the film is shot is less obvious as to who is who - then all the face swapping happens) I think it’s the moment on the crushing door when Lena is transffered but it’s not like invasion of the bodysnatchers... like Lena says they’re all “infected” with it just being there.... I think when Lena looks at the alien all confused as it’s morphing into her - she’s realising that is the moment her perspective is changing and she’s actually “become” the alien - but because the alien is essentially a 4th dimensional creature so Lena doesn’t die... she experienced 2 points of existence at one time through the fourth dimension (eg the alien was able to “teleport” which can only be explained by manipulating our dimension) I hope this helps - I might do my own explanation of this movie because nobody has covered a few other points
Absolutely, and it was stupid of the movie to have a scientist come to the conclusion given, when a scientist of all people should understand vocal mimicry and assume that over something vague and supernatural.
If you look closely, there's a human skull fused into the left side of the bear skull. The reason why the bear could mimic her voice was because they fused together.
It has her skull in the side of bear’s face. It seemingly fused with her. And I don’t know if many birds that can full on mimic a person entire voice, just what they say and maybe their tone.
My favorite recent sci-fi movie, simply because how everything is connected. Edit: not mentioned in the video, but the house they stop at, is Lena and Kane's house.
@@keondacook4387 if you go back to the scene where Kane first comes home after being missing, he looks up the stairs where there's light coming from the bedroom. it's the same flight of stairs and hallway as the house Lena and her team stop at.
I think the whole point of that shot with Lena drinking water at the end is actually brilliant. I dont think it has anything to do with blood or showing it was the real lena, but if you look at the shot cinematically, The water on the glass after she takes a drink visually resembles the image of cells dividing or replicating (as you notice the imagry of a cell splitting is heavily used in the movie) and its used to foreshadow that Kane is actually not himself but the "replicated" version of himself. Its honestly such fucking cool shot and it was like a cherry on top of the whole movie. Go back and watch that scene and look at how the water sticks to the glass after she drinks it
(major secret/spoiler) In the book they sent hundreds of expeditions, and changed the variables each time to see what changed. Its how they know not to take technology into the shimmer, evolution isn’t done through passing genes to offspring, but by merging side by side with whatever’s in area X
me: *points* yes inquisitor, that area right there. Inquisitor: *pushes exterminatus button*. Inquisitor: EXTERMINATUS! this was going through my mind the entire movie.....
@Raven The Goddess of Duality You know H. P. Lovecraft was the real name of a writer from the 20's. He had been THE guy who had put cosmic horror into the public.
Then you could say that John Carpenter was also inspired by Lovercraft's novel to make the movie "The thing" which is also an alien organism which mutates every living thing it touches into a part of itself
IF anyone wants to read the story Colour From Space by HP Lovecraft: repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/163740/H.%20P.%20Lovecraft%20-The%20Colour%20out%20of%20Space.pdf?sequence=1 (Student free version)
GREAT WHY DID YOU BRING THOSE 2 NIGHTMARISH CREATURES BACK INTO MY MIND! P.S: I'm not mad at you and I'm surprised people thought that because I did too
Are "skinwalkers" creatures from a certain movie?If so,what’s the name of that movie? (PS: I have watched “The Banshee Chapter” which was mentioned in these comments)
Some things I noticed: The source of the Shimmer was a Lighthouse which is ironic. The purpose of a lighthouse is to prevent ships from crashing - essentially, they prevent their *annihilation* - and yet after the alien crash lands it becomes a source of the very thing it was built to prevent. The water didn't mutate. The Shimmer can only mutate living things. Likely it was the bacteria in the water that was distorted by Lena's touch seeing as Lena still had part of the alien inside of her by that point enough that it could distort and mutate things in her proximity. The cells in their bodies were reaching the Hayflick Limit (the number of times a cell can divide in one's lifetime before they can no longer reproduce and you die) a lot quicker than they would naturally. Basically, the Shimmer was speeding up the time it would normally take for someone's cells to die (Lena at one point mentions the Hayflick Limit in what ostensibly appeared to be a throwaway comment to Kane in their bedroom, and Ventress at one point mentions that they were experiencing the early onset of dementia - more proof that their brains were experiencing the effects of old age within just a matter of days of being inside of the Shimmer.) Without the book's explanation of why Lena and her crew had amnesia when initially entering the Shimmer, it's impossible to discern that Ventress had hypnotized them from just watching the film alone. Alex Garland has purposely omitted this fact from the screenplay meaning that maybe he is suggesting an alternative explanation. My guess would be that entering the Shimmer is like being born; your mind cannot create memories right away because your brain is adjusting and developing (years in this case being mere days). My guess is that the Shimmer is essentially the alien's way of terraforming. When Lena destroyed the alien, it took the Shimmer with it along with everything that the Shimmer had mutated. Everything that was mutated was connected to the alien in some way. They became a part of it as soon as they entered the bubble. This furthers the belief that the film is basically one huge metaphor for cancer as cancer operates in a similar way which in my opinion is a huge slap in the face to the viewer because unless you look at it holistically, the individual pieces of the movie that support this theory do not make sense by themselves and therefore the film relies on this overarching metaphor to justify things that literally have no basis in any kind of reality that the viewer - even with adequate outside research - can make sense of. Alas, the alien (and then the Shimmer by dint of being a part of the alien) being destroyed and yet surviving inside of Lena and Kane is a metaphor for how diseases metastasize so that even when you destroy the route cause of it and it becomes benign, if it has spread, it will still exist in some way and become malignant again and spread like before. One thing I don't understand though is how Lena survived for 4 months inside of the Shimmer with only 2 weeks worth of provisions. Is it because the Shimmer changed her DNA in a way that required for her not to need the same level of sustenance in the form of food that a human would regularly need to survive outside of the Shimmer? Or does time operate differently inside of the Shimmer? It's pretty clear that a day inside of the Shimmer is not the same as a day outside of it. If it were a case of her being inside the Shimmer for 4 months but only remembering a few weeks of those 4 months due to the Shimmer's effect on her brain, then there's still the question of how she survived without adequate provisions. So if time was really operating differently, how so? The sun in the sky would be a dead giveaway that time was not flowing like normal (days would be noticeably longer). But even so, how would the Shimmer affect the sun? If they were asleep for longer than they initially thought when they arrived, then how did they all magically awake at the same time? There is no explanation for why Lena was in there for 4 months but could only remember a few weeks.
When it comes to the food, I think you're right about the Shimmer altering their DNA to where they don't rely on food as much. If you remember back to when they first entered the Shimmer and wake up after setting up camp, Sheppard says that judging by their food reserves, they had been there for four days already. That shows that a) time probably functioned the same in the Shimmer as it did out, and b) they still needed to eat food at that point in the beginning of their journey. However, I think that as they went on and mutated more and more with the Shimmer, they started to rely less and less on food because of their merging with the alien DNA.
Also, when "Kane" drank the water, he had an immediate physical reaction to it. Since he himself WAS the Shimmer (kind of), it further goes to show that the Shimmer does not need normal human nutrients like water (and probably food too). So while they're in there mutating with the Shimmer, they are mutating with something that, verifiably, does not need human nutrients.
If the Shimmer can "refract" a tattoo onto another person's body, a likely explanation for her continued survival is that metabolic power is "refracted" throughout the shimmer, meaning losses from starvation would be shared fairly equally across all the living things within. This would explain why everything seems to flourish in the Shimmer. As for time, she was knocked unconscious by the Shimmer at the lighthouse, iirc. It could be that her and her doppelganger were out for a very long time.
Peppermint Gal it could also be argued that maybe the doppelgänger stayed within the shimmer for a while and Lena really was in there for only a few weeks, since we only really see 2 nights and a couple days in the actual film, it would make sense time moves normally it’s just the shimmer version stayed inside for a while for whatever reason, maybe to adjust, to obtain memories, to evolve and mature, who knows
The infinity tattoo ends up on lots of their arms. It didn’t start on Lena’s but towards the end, she randomly gains it. Maybe that is some sort of sign?
The tattoo started as the bruise on her forearm. That she mentioned in the boat. When she takes blood from her arm to check it under the microscope, you can faintly see the outline of a shape.
They also explained the tattoo is a snake eating itself representing humans self destructive nature which was a message shown many times through out the movie
One theory I liked about why Lena’s double just willingly died in the Lighthouse was because that was her wish. An it seems the Shimmer or whatever was controlling it, is trying to understand humans in their final moments with wishes of some sort . Or at least the doppelgängers are. This can be seen in three instances. The first when during Joesie death. Right before she died, she went off about not wanting to fight the coming changes to her body and instead welcomed it. Joesie gave up and chose to be apart of the environment in the Shimmer. Second instance being that Kane’s wanted his double to find Lena after he’s gone. It’s assumed Kane’s double was told or communicated this wish to after both Kane and his double came into some sort physical contact. The reason it has to be physical contact is because when Lena hands her double the grenade, during that form of physical contact, the double got the sense of Lena’s wish. That wish being that Lena wanted the shimmer and everything in it destroyed. The theory’s interpretation was that Lena never actually tricked her double, and instead to fulfill her wish. This doesn’t really answer much else other than giving more explanation to how the doubles worked and function. Probably and more than likely is, alot of holes in this theory. However, I kinda liked it ngl. Idk, this movie didn’t make much sense to me anyway so reading this theory in another comment section kinda helped or at least gave me one way to view the movie
Things I don't agree with: Time wasn't warped. Perception and logical thinking was. I believe there was a change in perception; understanding of what is real and relevant to our own beings as humans. IE time. If time really was warped the sun wouldn't have been on it's normal track, which it could not have changed because they were not in a different dimension. They were still on earth under the veil of the shimmer. Also they were using the sun to not only monitor where they were heading (south) but they were using it to signify time. The "flower people" were not previously people. Everyone was evacuated from that town as said before they entered it. The plants themselves were forming into human shapes via hox genes(?) cells(?). Ventress was not herself. Ventress was a copy. Made apparent by how she lacked eyes. Because when the one metallic thing is turning into Lena as she hands it the grenade it is eyeless and practically faceless similar to how Ventress looked when we see her in the shimmers bunker. IT IS NOT A DIMENSION... 'nuff said
The movie is an allegorical exploration of the way people react and cope with trauma and loss. The nuts and bolts of how the shimmer works are totally irrelevant.
Also the water didn't "mutate" as it can't mutate. It only showed the difference between Lena who mutated but was human and Kane who was alien but with human genes. And I think Kane only got sick because he drank water but his body didn't know what to do and it got sick
The ouroboros symbolizes the cyclic Nature of the Universe: creation out of destruction, Life out of Death. The ouroboros eats its own tail to sustain its life, in an eternal cycle of renewal.
Apparently even the book leaves you like *wtf is going on* doesn’t explain shit and is written in journal form. I think this just got away from everyone. The author, the producers, everybody.
Pure Nightmare fuel: 1) The moving "intestine snake" scene. 2) Natalie Portman & Jennifer Jason Leigh facemorph 3) Bear creature. Yes, I found the facemorph to be even more disturbing than the bear creature. Guess I've played too many horror games with weird creatures in them. It didn't faze me that much. But "Natalie Leigh"... yikes.
for me, i think that the skulls and bones on the beach were actually kanes clones that kept killing each other. Note how on the video camera from the lighthouse, someone (probably one of kanes clone) filmed the landscape and there were no bones or skeletons on the beach like how Lena saw. I thought that was interesting. Also, with kane's clones, did anyone notice that he always had different clothes on? where did he get them from? maybe from the other soldiers because of the refraction and mutation? interesting food for thought. (sorry if there are any typos, you guys get the point ahaha)
I'm pretty sure it wasn't following her to exact and there are several instenses of the thing having a mind of its own. It might not have wanted her to leave for whatever reason. It's hard to say why though.
@@mfkai6080 probably to learn as much info as possible before killing her. The mirror needed to be a perfect copy in order to leave the shimmer and reproduce outside of ground zero and speed up the process of growth
Those plant people shapes. Aren't people that turned into plants, they're plants that mutated to have the gene that dictates human shape. Good stuff though.
@@TheDilden We never actually see what happened to her. Plus, the area was evacuated so there wouldn't be anyone left to mutate into plants. The characters even say the plants grew into the shapes.
Yea they originally assumed that to be the case until that girl literally turned into one. Proving that those were all people turning into plants. Just like the crazy skeleton and skull in the will with the guys legs sticking out. That was a person.
This movie was amazing ! Much better than I thought. The scene where the alien cloud formed and all those sounds was so well done. Natalie Portman is good.
Also, the guy on the wall has a tattoo in the same place as Lena's husband, on his chest. I don't know if its the same, but it's in the same place. Also, did her husband have the thick accent that he had in the last video? I don't remember him having that thick of an accent in the beginning.
holy shit the ambience, sound design, monster design, the setting was beautiful yet horrific, the acting! it was all incredible. this movie was so good to watch. great bloody job Alex Garland.
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Annihilation is the kind of movie where you know what’s going on but you also don’t know what’s going on
Exactly!
Exactly what the copy of yourself would say.
@@Sirpushyou Is This Reply To Me?
PMD15 not originally, but now I don’t who to trust.
@@Sirpushyou Ok Then I Thought You Replied To Me
Is it just me, or does the skull-bear thing look like the monsters from temple run
Omg yeah!
😐😶😯😲🧐🙂🙃😄😁🥳😎
John Doe really? i didn’t know the yao guai could imitate screams
PolerVrize how did you find out!?!
It actually does look like it!
If y’all look carefully on the side of the bears skull
There is a human skull fused into it.....
It didn’t kill her........
It ABSORBED HER..
Was about to say that. The only eye it has is the eye in the human skull.
In its screaming you can hear "Help me Mom" or something like that if you listen close
I mean...it did kill her
@@duckyjoel5373 I believe her conscious was still aware inside of the beast though. Other stories of similar creatures has the person still conscious and aware and able to see through the beasts eyes, but unable to control it or do anything, just watch what it does through its eyes. I believe if they were going with one of these creatures as they appeared to, she is still aware and conscious in that bears head.
@@gundamgunpla4685 oh fuck thats terrifying imagine watching that thing kill your friends unable to do anything to stop it as it uses your voice to trick them
I don’t even wanna imagine what’s in the ocean that’s part of the shimmer 😖
Vampire mermaids!
I am the most afraid of human minds in which we create the imagination of those monster
@@alfonsogarcia1519 I’m 14 and this is deep
@@alfonsogarcia1519 lmao🚲
I do!! I would love a Shimmer 2. Into the *shimmering* Water.
The bear scene chilled me to the bone, it was fantastic and hearing that slowed tormented scream emanate from such a horrible creature was horrifying
I couldn't sleep for like the next two days because of that scene. Everything else was okay , but that messed me up... it was insanely unsettling.
Everytime the bear opened his mouth I couldn't stop laughing, it was really funny scene!
“...To the bone,”
*Seinfeld theme*
That scene gave me nightmares
Yeah the only part that stood out for me. Awesomely nightmarish.
they should have done a separate movie where it showcases what’s going on in the ocean
Narrated by Morgan freeman
Ikr!
Black Scythe narrated by David Attenborough*
*OCEAN MAN*
Bioshock?
That freaking bear is easily the one of the scariest things I’ve seen in movies.
I thought it was freaking cow
Agree
Heelp... Meee...
Yeah it freaked me out esp when it screamed help me out right from its mouth of the bone chilling scene indeed
Yeah, that creature is nightmare incarnate by how it acts and looks.
Ikr I have been a fan of horror movies so long, that scene scared the heck outta me.
"it would be able to expand continuously without ever dying"
That's cancer
Yes. That's the intended implication. Ventress says to Lena, of Kane's decision to go into the shimmer knowing he wouldn't come back, "don't confuse suicide with self-destruction." And she's right. We're programmed to self-destruct, our very cells are programmed to stop dividing after a certain limit. What this alien is, at its core, is a cancer to the very planet itself.
I thought the same thing when she said that!
Alse Ventress had cancer and was strangely drawn to the lighthouse. Was she looking for a cure? Or perhaps cancer was left behing on the planet from previous contacts with alien life forms? And Ventress was drawn to it by the nature of her cancer?
@@moonnightwalk I think she went to the lighthouse simply because that's where the crash happened and the shimmer originated. But I like your interpretation; it's elegant.
Bruh that's every virus in the world without treatment too lmao
As Lena said, the shimmer doesn't destroy -- it makes something new. Kane and Lena are not destroyed, but they are not what they were.
Actually, Lena is still in the same body and mine and its proven because she didnt bleed when drinking the water.
Squeeker NATION it's not proven, he isn't bleeding anymore either because they external shimmer doesn't exist anymore and is now contained inside of them. Lena thought if she destroyed her clone she could get out, but the clone was inside her because her and the shimmer and alien were all already one and the same at that point. She was the original and the clone, it was mirroring her, by so extension she would mirror it, that's the entire theme of the movie, constant duality, diverging paths turning out to be one and the same. She's definitely not the original human Lena anymore, even though she is, she's also the shimmer clone. It's confusing as fuck.
@@KaiInMotion you're saying they're one in the same so she's basically both?
It's made pretty clear by the movie that she destroyed her clone, whereas the original Kane killed himself.
@@squamish4244 But her eyes shimmering with Kane at the end suggests she didn't come back entirely as she came in, that's the point @Yvonne is making.
Is it just me who’s not usually scared by horror films but actually got really creeped out by this film
NoShowCr0w 鴉 stop self promoting my man
do you fart this was one month ago...
@@jewelsong nah I'm sorry that shit was scary af
Ye
I get super scared of horror movies, i basically can't even watch them. But this movie became an instant favorite for me
I was so sad when Josie "died" cause she knew it was coming and wanted to embrace it so she could go out happily rather than in fear like Sheppard and Anya did.
right but it was so so beautiful :(
Isn't that a happy thing?
Its those damn 5G towers i tell ya
Now u mention it u might be on something...🧑🦽
LOL
😂😂😂
This movie hurt my head😂😂
jen soni goddamn kids and their technology
I personally don't think the clone was trying to replicate the fire. I believe the clone had absorbed enough of Lena that they even shared the same mind at that point. That's why afterwards she touches the ships and the weird vein like structures setting it all ablaze because she knows it must be done. This act further pushes the theme of self destruction. It also explains why she touches the corpse of Kane in an almost consoling manner as she has Lena's memories and therefore cares for Kane. Everything affected by the shimmer is then destroyed except for Lena and Kane for some reason. Perhaps Lena got out before everything was annihilated and anything outside the shimmer manages to survive.
Came in here to say the same thing.
Bill Marion yeah I still don’t understand why the doppelgänger Kane couldn’t exist outside of the Shimmer. And once the shimmer was destroyed he was fine..?
it didn't have the same memories just the same body. Two different things. It was trying to learn from her but mirroring it. It's just like her holusbands doppelganger. He told his double her name and that's how it found her, it didn't know much about her and was confused because it hadn't had any memories of its experiences with her because it only just got born. It only knew what it was told and it was told to find her and her name, which it did. So in the case of the grenade I believe it was trying to learn by handling it. It didn't see it as a two function device because she held it and didn't go up in flames so it didn't even know about what the object did. No shared memories.
-1990skelly
What if at the end the lena they were interviewing was infact the alien that was lying at the end cuz when the alien kane asked are you lena? She didn't answer and after they hugged both of their eyes glowed. So they made it past the shimmer and they will start annihilation now.
I've read the books and you're right
the water isnt mutating holy shit why does everyone say that, the surface tension of the water on the glass causes that, and it looks like a mirror image. its symbolism for the whole movie
demon212 I was really confused when he said that because I was not seeing anything about the water other than bringing the wedding ring into focus and the difference that Kane bled into his water before and she does not.
The water is there to show that it is her. Unlike her “husband” who started bleeding because he’s never had water. A non planetary host who found a host who already mutated billions of years on earth. What a perfect combination.
THANK YOU! Who doesn't see that?
Yeah I never thought this had anything to do with water mutating lol. Not sure why so many try to see that, when it's clearly just a bit of symbolism (Water is the genesis of life after all). But above all, it was a trow back to the scene where Kane drank the water and there was blood in it. This was simply her checking if she was like Kane or not. A doppleganger.
I don't even think that Kane got sick because he was away from the prism. He got sick the moment he drank the water. He was trying to mimic human behavior, but his body probably didn't know how to ingest water which triggered multiple organ failures. Again, the doppleganger is not a perfect copy. It keeps evolving and adapting and it tries to learn from the original.
I think drinking the water triggered his sickness.
Hence her reaction when she drank the water. If she was a doppleganger, her body would probably have reacted the same way.
Kane's alien doppleganger is part human, while she is a human with parts of the alien mutation within her. In a way, they both complete each other.
Water doesn't have any DNA for mutation.
This movie needs a sequels and a few prequels. Like honestly, I would love to see what happen in the ocean and what happened to many of the previous teams.
The movie is based on the Southern Reach trilogy. Annihilation is based on the first novel, then there’s Authority & Acceptance.
the books do go there. fun fact, the psychologist was the director of the whole administration. the reason her actress's performance was weird was bc the character herself was putting on an act & wasn't good at it
The movie does need sequels, I agree. But the sequels would have to be closer to the books, and given the changes made between the book and this film, it would make it difficult to create coherent sequels. The books are excellent, though, in and of themselves.
I would do anything for the sequel delving into the oceans starting with a mutated sounding voice that says "Dreams are messages from the Deep".
There are a few things I think you got wrong. The book covers some of these in greater detail.
#1. Ventress didn't go in because she thought something inside would help her, she went inside because she knew she had cancer and was going to die anyway, so taking a suicide mission was fine.
#2. Anya's tattoo doesn't resemble "self-destruction", it resembles an infinite life cycle. The snake is in a figure 8 and it's chasing its tail. If you watch a snake do that in real life, you'll be there forever.
#3. Before they passed through the shimmer, Ventress put all of them into hypnosis, this is the reason they don't remember setting up camp. The fact that Ventress didn't pull them out of hypnosis for 3 days is the clue you missed.
#4. Time doesn't power a compass.
#5. Things in Area X aren't evolving, they're mixing. The moment they walk in and noticed the growths on the walls they comment that it looks "malignant" which was a reference to the cancer Ventress has. When they walked into the shimmer, all their cells began mixing with everything else. This is also why Lena gains the tattoo from Anya, or why the bear can talk, or why people became plants, or how the animals have plants growing from their bodies. The cells of every living creature in the area are bounced around the entire area mixing with everything and vice-versa.
#6. When Lena finds the source of the shimmer and her blood mixes with it, it creates a copy of her. The copy wasn't learning from Lena just because it copied her movements, it IS Lena, it knows everything she knows and moves like her because they share the same brain and knows how she will move. Even when their backs are to each other they move the same. If the copy was learning from her, how can it predict her movement while blind?
#7. The water wasn't mutating.
When he got to the "water mutating" part, my girlfriend and I looked at each other confused because that's just water being water.
I think a snake can eat itself if it tried.
why did the copy hold the flash grenade if it also had all the same thoughts and memories, it would know what was going to happen next. wouldn't it at least sense the danger or know what the device is and its propose???
*purpose
@@manican4620 Not really, snakes eat things whole than digest over time, they dont chew so the snakes own body type prevents it from eating itself.
They grab prey in their jaws and use the muscles to work it down their throat while moving the the body forward.
Wh couldn’t they just fly above the shimmer until they find the lighthouse then they skydive there?
Ive been looking for someone like you lol that's what I was thinking
Just got done watching it and was thinking same shit! Lol I know I'm late.
because plot.
or why didn't they get there from the sea?
Dude.. Because it won't work their inside... Technology and signals won't work
Lol just drink a bucket of milk to remove The effect
Lmao 😂😂😂
There is a difference between Minecraft and a movie idoit....
WAIT
The only problem I find with this comment is that you didn’t spell idiot right
MINECRAFT REFERENCE
Random Gamer21 now that is a epic gamer move
I’m going to have to disagree on what happened to Ventris. I believe she was already a doppelgänger shifting into final form when Lina walks through the portal and sees her sitting which is why she didn’t have eyes when we first see her, but by the time she turns, her face is fully formed. But she has cancer, so the shimmer didn’t want her form or cells and left her body in the flash of light after it saw Lina there. Then it took Lina as the form to return from the shimmer.
Love your take on this. Still trying to wrap my head around the ending!
no you were wrong and just see the scene again it was not the clone but Ventris herself, In the scene Ventris says that she found the shimmer and it entered its body and had integrated with her and later disintegrated or were absorbed by the shimmer
@@arghyagupta No, you’re wrong. Your words don’t even make an intelligible sentence.
You're forgetting that in the beginning when Kane drank the water blood came out, but when Lena drank it nothing happened. Imo this was to show that Lena was the real Lena, whereas Kane was the mutation.
Matt P. No I think the reason why she didn’t have blood coming out from drinking was because the shimmer was already collapsed. Don’t forget that Kane also got better after the shimmer is down. When the shimmer is down, it stops cloning and all the effects. The clone Kane was bleeding and the was probably because the outside world environment is completely different than in the shimmer.
Yes it shows you that the Kane that returned was the mutation. Lena was also the mutation as her body is being refracted so one is still a human mutation and one is the copy. This is the way I saw it does not mean i am right lol
Gotta disagree. I think it just confirms that it was the Shimmer's continual, accelerated refraction that was making Kane ill.
I mean if the doppelgangers have a water intolerance, kane would've died (or at least have still been sick) as he was hooked up to fluids.
Her eyes did change at the end
He said that he kane was bleeding because he was there too long than her wife
Here is my theory.
The glass of water at the end of the film wasn’t mutating, it was a foreshadowing that she was a reflection of the original Lena the same way the image of her hand is reversed through the glass of water. An identical shot at the start of the film involved Cane’s hand, foreshadowing his true identity.
Now as far as the whole Shimmer Lena goes. I think the switch happens earlier in the scene, when “Lena” tries to escape the cave and sees the being suddenly in front of her, whom I believe is the Real Lena as seen by Shimmer Lena. This makes sense a because while the audience is lead to believe the Shimmer Lena somehow teleported ahead, this is actually all from Shimmer Lena’s point of view, chasing after Real Lena. Real Lena tries to prevent Shimmer Lena from escaping, which results in a brief fight. Once it’s obvious none will get the upper hand, Shimmer Lena gives Real Lena a grenade who then resigns herself to her fate.
The reason I believe this has to do with Lena feeling indebted to Cane because of her infidelity. The film establishes that Real Cane calmly commits suicide (self-destruction), meaning Real Lena has no reason to survive the journey anymore since the man who came to her house at the start of the film wasn’t her husband. This is reinforced by how the metallic doppelgänger, whilst peacefully dying by fire, tenderly caresses Real Cane’s charred remains before destroying the lighthouse, in essence Real Lena dying at her husbands side.
It could be wrong, but this makes the most sense to me.
Nice theory but I would count on it if we're talking about the source material.
This theory makes the most sense
Pretty sure Lena didn't drop blood in the water like Cane did. Cane being the doppelganger bleeds into the water and nearly dies from it where as Lena easily accepts the water. I do believe the glass of water does have a double meaning, you're right that they are refracted from their old selves, both different than their former selves.
There;s no way, notice how the grenade instantly killed kane? She would as well where the copy obviously lasted longer. The rest I have no clue but being human she would not have lasted that long.
@@DjPolarMusic That is also true, but keep in mind that Kane's clone also got a lot better instantly as soon as The Shimmer was destroyed.
That could indicate that with The Shimmer being gone, the two of them can adapt to Earth's surroundings and live normally among the regular humans.
Idc what anyone says this movie was absolutely beautiful and unique
0 58 Too creepy and cerebral to be a mainstream success. Too bad.
I mean not caring doesnt make your opinion fact. It's a really good movie though.
It was garbage.
It was amazing.
Also a movie that would make you go, "wtf?"
i just couldn't stand the cliches and the predictability.
unique: yes
Original: no
The reasons for each person entering the shimmer changed their outcomes. josie- someone who engaged in self-harm to feel alive. when she arrived at the flower fields she was able to see beauty which gave her the feeling she was seeking; she then became the flowers that gave her that feeling. ventress- a woman with cancer who was resigned to her fate. She was determined to finish the mission as she knew her time was limited. when she finished the mission of getting to the lighthouse she was able to let go and die. she took fate into her own hands instead of shrivling up due to cancer. katie- a person with addiction and drug issues. her mind was her downfall. she was the first to lose her sanity which is indicative of her mental state as an ex drug addict. lena was able to leave the shimmer because she needed to live for kane. kane was unable to leave because he was in the shimmer too long and lost his mind, so he sent a duplicate of himself to re-unite with lena. sheppard's fate was the most tragic. she entered the shimmer because her child died from leukemia; something she had no control of which left her feeling empty. she died from a wild animal which reflects that lack of control of her own life.
Wow amazing!!
this is a great analysis
You have the right concept.
Great
Wow you seem to have got it who are you? I would love to have some conversation ❤
It’s just so weird to see Padme and Poe Dameron together like that.
Ohhhh, I knew I’ve seen them from somewhere
And, Jane Foster and En Sabah Nur, and Valkyrie turning to a female groot lol
What the fuck is Poe dameron
@@hoodyhoo1004 Pilot dude from the newer Star Wars
Ikr...
“Quarantined” *starts slowly crying*
"entanglement" will starts crying
World War 2 flashbacks
"Apple" *starts slowly crying*
9 months ago haha
@@supflame2263 yeah *starts slowly crying*
This was a beautiful movie but the ending definitely had me scratching my head. I was able to follow along the whole film until like the last 20 mins
Just imagine Cancer cells, as Aliens. That's the movie in a nutshell.
Earth = Human body
Cancer = Aliens
It might even be a direct movie metaphor, but that's unconfirmed, so it's mostly just as a comparison.
Same
same
Except Lena essentially purged the cancer - her 'Shadow side', thematically, by not running from it but facing it. So perhaps she is only left with beneficial effects of the Shimmer.
@@squamish4244
You could say she has integrated her shadow.It's the opposite for Kane; he has been devoured by his self-destructive tendencies and is now a husk of his former self.
Their reunion is pretty tragic from that perspective.Essentially, Lena is forced to accept and live with the fact she became her husband's undoing.
The sloth bear tracking the others is one of the saddest things ever. As Josie describes the bear as taking on part of shepherd's mind (not just voice,) the bear tracked them not to emulate the voice and lure out "prey" but was literally calling out for help and looking for its (shepherds) friends. That is why it didn't attack, it was nuzzling the tied up crew based on shepherds need to be with them.
It bit her shoulder thoug and was only stopped by eventual gunfire.
@@eccomi21 No. It lightly bit Josie on the shoulder yes but it let go n stood there for a while until Anya went in guns blazing provoking it too attack
I like your interpretation, it's a very cool idea but at the very least the bear's conscienceness isn't only Shepherd. The bear eventually bites one of the scientists on the shoulder and you can hear her start screaming. Her scream gets louder over the course of a few seconds as the camera shot changes which implies that the bear is biting softly and then harder and harder even though we don't see it directly. So unlike Syrus Angi suggesting that the bear wasn't trying to hurt the scientist by biting her, I think the bear and Shepherd were sharing a conscienceness. Even though the Shepherd part wanted to find her friends and maybe comfort them with a soft bite, the bear part takes over and tries to consume them.
That is _so_ much worse than it just being an integrated lure for hunting. I... I have maybe only heard of such a thing maybe twice before, and once it was in Lovecraftian horror.
It's was a grizzly bear, not a sloth bear.
FYI, the Shimmer isn’t another dimension. It’s more like a bubble that rests upon the Earth and has been expanding ever since it landed on Earth. The alien lands, the physical Shimmer wall expands, and everything inside it begins to mutate. When they cross over the Shimmer Wall, they aren’t entering another dimension, they are entering an altered portion of the planet, a mutated forest that exists physically on Earth.
@Black Santo Nino Time distortion is just memory loss from the mutation. You could say the body adapted to the point where their memory worked again or that she just doesn't remember their entire time in the bubble. From a movie point of view, we see everything in sequence but there may be big gaps in between that she simply doesn't remember.
@Black Santo Nino I think it was more-so their concept of time being distorted than time itself. Time was still going by as it normally would, but how the team perceived time was altered and manipulated by the shimmer.
Black Santo Nino . Time is relative and like others have said it’s their perception of time that’s distorted
@Black Santo Nino Time is not distorted. People with Alzheimer's just can't remember but thier cells are being changed. And as for the shimmer, think of it as an EMF of a different frequency that Earth's lifeforms are altered and the alien itself is looking for a host. This scene was nicely done by the way.
Simon Dimock, I compared it to Chernobyl. Everything within a radius of the destroyed nuclear power plant was altered by its radio active effect. Similarly here, all the genes in the vicinity of the crash site were affected by the alien genes which they then carried farther and farther causing the area to grow.
Just finished watching the film with my mother. Here is my very detailed and relatable thoughts after it:
*wtf?*
Same. Just finished. What the fuck.... that's all I've got to say.
@@diamondkivi4721 lol
Wtf same i watched it with my mom too! Like 10 minutes ago?
lmfao same me and my mom were speechless
Me too! Like I just finiished watching it like 30 minutes ago with my mom.
this is why we need the SCP Foundation
I wonder if that Southern Reach was their 'foundation'
This is very *[DATA EXPUNGED]*
Exactly!👍🏽
Yes
Not even they could contain this shit
The metallic clone is purposefully burning everything down, it is not an accident. If you watch it again you can clearly see that it intentionally touches everything to burn it all down, so it means the alien acquired Lena's conscience and is acting self-destructively as a result.
Oh wowwww
Because the movie is talking about human destruction and refracting. What if the being refracted Lena’s human “self destruction” and fell victim to it
This was my impression as well! Especially in the almost tender way that it touched Kane’s face
This was my interpretation as well!
@@ayagoto6251 It touches Kane's remains and its shoulders slump - I see it copying Lena's feelings. It hardly seems to notice the fire; it just acts like it's grieving how it destroys everything it makes.
Kane:O alien of the shimmer find my wife
Alien:I got you homie
Kane still thinks about her despite she cheated
General Kenobi
What a cop out way to spell Caine
@@sage7149 8:47 it says cane. So please dont correct someone if youre gonna be wrong too. I think its probably a spelling mistake but i dont care i find someone being named after an object hilarious
@@tntcake6327 I’m sorry my sarcastic joke about a kinda niche tabletop role playing universe wasn’t understood. I in fact wasn’t correcting but was referencing the first vampire in the Vampire the Masquerade tabletop game series, which is part of the greater lore of the World of Darkness setting. I apologise for ruffling any feathers with my niche and very indie reference. My form of sarcasm doesn’t translate well IRL so it can’t be expected to translate over a TH-cam comment.
That deep trumpet's sound gives me the chills everytime.
What time stamp?
@@McGowanForge not in the video, see the movie
I don’t think it’s a trumpet, it’s just a bassy synth patch. I think the guy who did it played keyboards for Portishead; it has the same surreal sound as that band.
Jmv Almonte trump gives me chills every time too
Andrew trump is a trumpet
I'm starting to really like these semi-realistic sci-fi movies. I loved Arrival and Interstellar, and I really liked this movie
Yes, Arrival immediately came to mind. Upstream Color, Solaris and 2001 also come to mind. But the plot seemed loosely close to "The Invasion", where supernatural dna mixed with ours and evolved us into different beings.
Omg agreed
Scapeezian Twitch I thought they didn’t fire as to not potentially kill their buddy. But I also had your same thought.
I couldn't understand annihilation .. its ending is so confusing
captaintaco2345 arrival and interstellar were awesome
I thought I was on acid during this movie tbh
Ajax same.
I watched it while stoned and it fucked me up
wish I did the same
The movie reminded me of a VERY bad trip I had once (we're talking writhing around on a hospital bed at 2 AM) and should have come with a trigger warning label for a "Bad psychoactive substance experience". LOL
Best movie to watch stoned lol
Gina Rodriguez’s death was GNARLY. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a scary/realistic death on film.
The scene at the dinner table where Lina slowly pulls her hand back from Kane’s and you can only see their fingers in the glass is foreshadowing. You can’t really tell where one’s fingers end and the others begin. The glass and the water are REFRACTING the light (the very image/appearance) of their hands, foreshadowing the fact that the shimmer is also a prism that refracts, blends, and corrupts light (but also DNA, geometry, memories, time, and basically anything that follows a discernable pattern/plan).
Insightful
thats exactly what the shimmer is. Its existence is to refract everything that is inside of its aura. Can't really define it as an entity, its more like its a wormhole or a blackhole.
That's exactly what the author tried to develop. I'm a geologist, mineralogy specialist, so I have my deal with crystallography and when they started talking about refraction, the implications of the shimmering acting as a reality refractor, the same way an anisotropic material difracts light, were pretty clear. The fact is, it's sort of hard science fiction, because without optical physics knowledge people just talk about mutations, evolution, DNA and other biology-related processes which are clearly not what is happening in the shimmer.
Thank you! I saw that and was like “this has to be a metaphor for something”
You write to much for a comments
After watching this, a second ending analysis, I’m convinced no one knows what the hell happened in this movie, probably not even the movie makers.
I know I should read the book for an explanation but I don't want to end the mistery
I have a feeling it's so confusing because it's all not the actual story of what occurred in the shimmer, it's being told my lena technialy but it's either her clone or an altered version of her so the thing could be telling something that's not the truth to ensure the humans don't know what's happening
Like Donnie Darko, it's left better up to interpretation of the viewer and isn't meant to have any one specific meaning.
@@katg7623 She's also an unreliable narrator because she admits to memory loss and lost time.
@@agravemisunderstanding9668 the book is COMPLETELY different from the movie and wouldn't spoil anything about the mystery. I watched the movie, then read the book, then rewatched the movie and only the barebones concepts are the same
I found this theory in Reddit hope you guys like it.
"Here's my (admittedly unfocused) pseudo-theory. I should also point out that I have not read the novels; but I think Alex Garland took his own path for the messages and ideas.
Kane told his doppelganger to find Lena. He went back to the house, but he didn't ask, "Are you Lena?" until the end of the film. Lena, up to that point, was a product of self-destruction. Only after her change inside the shimmer, only after facing her doppelganger and realizing she did not want to self-destruct anymore, was she now "Lena." Kane, unfortunately, did not have that strength. It was the better of each of the two that made it out.
The entity needs Lena to fully integrate into its new world. Much like Josie experienced, acceptance of what is happening can create beauty. Fighting against it creates something horrible. Lena needed a Kane that didn't have the destruction and deterioration that their marriage had. A fresh start, if you will. It became a symbiotic pairing.
Cass needed to be a part of something again after her daughter died. So she became a part of the creature. Anya needed to know the truth. She found it. Ventress needed to see what was at the center. She became one with it. Josie needed to feel life. She became a part of the same flora as an entire town. Lena needed to save Kane. So she became the Lena he went out in the world to find. It didn't destroy. It made something new. I think what the Shimmer did is it took out the part of our genetic makeup that was predisposed to self-destruct. Annihilation of the human condition."
Fairly great theory they posted. I like this idea a lot
Mmccc .
A.C. Slater so... if I wanted to escape the shimmer and have it destroyed... would I escape and destroy the shimmer?
I agree with you. In physics Annihilation doesn't mean to destroy necessarily. It is the act of making something new out of old materials, the old materials are destroyed in the process but it's more about creation rather than destruction.
What about Shepherd getting her throat ripped out?
Ending explained? I NEED THE WHOLE DAMN MOVIE EXPLAINED!
well he did explain the whole movie
@@iamacat9400 no he just did a fucking re-count of it it’s not an actual explanation is it.
@@iamacat9400 it’s more of a summary
Why you mad lmao@@DonRoyalX
@@ema-db9ri my peewee is teeny
The one thing I still don't understand is how tf did the Kane doppelganger get out of Area X and travel all the way to Lena's house without any complication whatsoever, despite all the military and scientists surrounding the area monitoring it 24/7.
Best comment here finally someone with a brain... only thing I can think of is whatever this thing is.. it’s beyond our comprehension, time , matter , space, and etc. and has some type of intelligence.. bc went back to get wife and now there is a man and woman at end.. I guess it teleported there. So that just shows it is not stuck just to that field of whatever, idk. If this is making since. But just seems strategic.. and pretty much it created it’s own Adam and Eve at the end.
It's implied they can teleport. Kane's doppelganger says in the beginning "I was at your door" with no idea how he got there. Then we see Lena's alien teleport from the underground area to the lighthouse.
@Conal Wheeldon [Student] 8 read the entire trilogy, and I'm still not sure what on earth it's about. Lena sure has one heck of a different fate, though.
I wondered that too but decided I'd throw it in the "suspension of disbelief" file and ignore it. I find it best not to question Hollywood creations too deeply. 😉
Remember in the film that entity possess the ability to teleport. So maybe it teleported.
My theory is that when they forget the first 3 days they've actually all been duplicated already and the real ones died of radiation
Maybe, pretty out there but at the same time not really
AJames Barlow yeah well your wrong
Mate the whole movie was “pretty out there but not really”
@@emerys2665 the theory is pretty out there in terms of narrative, not reality
It could have been their bodies at the lighthouse
*THIS EVENT SHOULD BE HANDLED BY THE SCP FOUNDATION THEY HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH THESE TYPE OF EVENTS*
the scp foundation would do the same, sending in d class members with a go pro probably connected to their head or even a camera that is producing live footage. they wouldnt really approach very differently
Actually they would, in this instance, find a way to prevent its spreading.
@@silverbro13 Yes... after sending in D class to observe and learn about it... Have you ever read any of the SCP's when they encounter location-based anomalies? Standard procedure.
@@jeremiahgrimm928 i agree
I wonder If we could send Cain in there cuz life around him withers and dies when he's around
I have read or listened to most of Lovecraft's stories, wishing in vain for years that someone could finally manage to make an adaptation of his ideas that didn't totally suck. Event Horizon was amazing, but this movie is the closest I've come yet to seeing Lovecraftian weirdness correctly adapted to the big screen.
And it's absolutely incredible.
Check out the film adaption of ‘Colour Out Of Space’ basically the same premise as this film and executed really well. I give this a 6.5/10 and Colour a 7/10
There is also The Endless.
I’m guessing the guy with the moving intestines had a tapeworm, or some kind of parasite, that led to his mutation.
I didn’t think of it like that but that would make complete sense
Could we even say for example if I swallowed a plant seed from a watermelon before I went in the shimmer. do y’all think it would also grow within me as well ?
@@vickg9218 You'd be like kool-aid man but watermelon-aid-man.
@Noise Pollution oh no
What's her face said her fingerprints and skin were moving. I think it was just his intestines moving around
The bear with shepherd’s voice was just horrific but badass at the same time
This whole movie was just a straight dmt trip
That's entirely possible
**Joe rogan enters the chat**
DMT trips make this movie look like a public library in comparison. forgetting you ever lived as a human while being out in the endless space of your brain and its creations is by far the most insane thing i think a human can witness besides death. i saw colors that do not exists in our visible spectrum and cant remember what they look like once i come out, the Geometry and symmetry of the visions are also beyond comprehension. you forget the moment you come back, you have it for a moment and it fades by the second since brain not on DMT cant comprehend what you saw. seeing with your mind instead of your eyeballs is the craziest thing ever. no matter how many times you do it you cant prepare yourself to forget. every dmt trip that takes me to eternity/the void i completely forget ever living while im there. im just content with being there for eternity. it feels like i have always been there and will be for ETERNITY and actually grasping how long that is. full comprehension of infinity and being content with it. no human in normal human brain state would be ok with that, i give the stongest of minds 500 years tops before they would want out. but DMT brain you IS there for eternity and is just cool with it. all that comes there with me is my energy, not my name not my body. whatever make me who i am is what goes to the void on a dmt trip. and that part of you can endure eternity and embrace it. you need really pure stuff and have to inject it to get that effect i think. blasting off when i smoked it was insane but i tested injecting it because a chemist made it who showed me his degree and his looked different than any other dmt i ever saw. not opaque dust, it was transparent to an extent with a crystal structure and it was white but under a microscope it was like milky white mini crystals (chem guy had a cool microscope with a screen) and could not be in sunlight and had to be kept in a freezer or it would rapidly decay in purity he said. my boy stuck it in my foot vein because it comes on so fast had i done it myself ide have been gone with that thing still in my foot and probably rolled around. im terrified of needles so it was an experiment. but it was unexplainable/cannot be remembered vividly at all/ and when i came back it was like seeing earth for the first time but as a grown man and not a baby. i WOULD NOT recommend it to anyone unless it was made by a chemist that legit spent years upon years doing nothing but studying chemistry at a university. i could make dmt but it would be yellow powder looking stuff, and it wouldnt take very long, for whatever reason DR, chemist took 5 weeks to make what went in my foot, and it came with a free mini ice cooler stored in some weird glass vial thing surrounded by ice. again would not recommend unless you want to forget you ever lived...meaning that five minutes or however long it was does feel like infinity. also you hear sounds so loud that they would deafen you but since its just your brain and not actual sound it just vibrates you down to your soul. idk imagine a nuclear bomb going off inside your brain. thats what happens when you do what i did. to say i was humbled or scared or happy are all understatements. you feel the most powerful emotion you can possibly tolerate and that emotion is also forgotten after you return.
my names mike and that's how DMT feels when you inject it in your foot and it was made by a chemist. the best way i think to help someone understand is to ask them describe how the color green or red look to a blind man. explain a color to a blind man. it cannot be done youll just keeping saying the colors name, or name objects that are that color. but you cant explain what it looks like. that's how DMT works, but you're the blind man and dmt can explain it perfectly.
@@sidology1.0 omg i waa gonna type that😂
@@Mikeplaysdbd lmao bruh🤣😂🤣😂
The snake tattoo is called an oroboros. It’s a symbol of death and rejuvenation and a constant balance
yea they use those kind of symbols in horros movies like the new conjuring movie
Some spoilers for the book!
I enjoyed this movie. I liked the cosmic horror aspects involved. If you also enjoyed the movie I would highly recommend the books. While the books are written differently to your typical story (annihilation written as a journal) this just plays into how unexplainable the shimmer is. The book also differs from the movie in many ways (spoilers ahead). While in the movie there is an explanation as to how the shimmer appears, in the book it is explained that the shimmer just showed up one day and tore through a small town near the coast. The source of the shimmer in the book also seems to be a mysterious tower that wasn't there before the shimmer appeared not the lighthouse (though the lighthouse is relevant in the story). Another notable part of the story is that the group that goes into the shimmer aren't known by name rather by profession (Lena is known as the biologist). A big part of the movie that isn't the same in the books is how their cells are altered. In the book Lena accidentally inhales some moss spores from inside in tower. She doesn't tell the others. She feels the spores having an effect on her body, but when checking her cells finds nothing. My favorite part about the book is how you're given facts and hints about what the shimmer can do, but in the end you have no idea what's going on. That coupled with the fact that our narrator could be unreliable (again seeing as the book is written as a journal) makes you uncertain of everything. I feel like the movie never captured this feeling, but it was still enjoyable none the less.
So cool to see someone else who has read the books here. The tower/tunnel and the groups perception of it was really interesting
Loved the books as well. I have been consuming all of Vandermeers works
While watching the movie, whenever they got close to any fungal structure I was like "it could RELEASE SPORES YOU DUMBASS". Like, what kind of scientist would get near a highly replicable and possibly hostile bio-structure??
I think this movie perfectly captures the essence of *idk wtf is going on*
Watched this movie high as shit, damn near made my head explode lmao. Wish there were more out there like it tbh.
watch Color Out of Space if you haven't already! It has very similar vibes to this.
Watch "The Void"
@@joeyblaze2509 that movie was something else. Still nice to watch if you like body dysmorphic beasts with alien.
Watch Arrival too
Stop getting high... or get high and watch this : th-cam.com/video/X3cZBR0NN2M/w-d-xo.html
So in 3 years no one tried fire?one thing we are known for, setting sh*t on fire.
Love this comment 😂😂😂
Specifically a phosphorus grenade though. Extremely difficult to put out the fire
did you see what the grenade did?? it didn’t *exactly* work but...eh
Time to bring napalm back lol
The lighthouse died because of the alien that spread the fire as it refracted it burning the lighthouse acting as the hose for the place that burns everything else
Came for the ending
Got the full story
Lmao same
10:18 I always thought these were plants that had grown as humans
I think both are valid. As Josie clearly is turning full on plant. And it was stated that the 'town' they were in was being evacuated; I think both statements are true
i thought they took dna from dead things (humans) and the plants used it to form the structure but josie ended up getting the plants
I don't think the water that she drunk from in the interrogation mutated, it was a close up to show you she wasn't in the same state as her husband. When he drank from a glass of water you saw his blood in the water.
I had the same feeling. I want more in-depth analysis as to why it's thought otherwise. It seemed obvious that it was a recreation of her husband drinking water
I think the focus was on the reversed image seen through the water, further reiterating the prism theme. This indicates either she has changed, or she is a copy of the original. Much like the reversed image of her husband's doppleganger through the glass of water, when he was sitting at the table.
Anthony Hayes yes. I think it also had another purpose for the character. It was her way of making sure she was still human. When Kane drank water, there were blood drops in it. So maybe the close up was to show that there is no blood in her water therefore she's ok AND uses the refraction of her hand to indicate that she's changed nonetheless.
As I said in the previous thread above, I believe the water at the end was to remind us of an earlier scene when she gives her (shimmer) husband a glass of water and they zoom in on the glass, showing their hands refracted and undefined, similar to how the shimmer refracts cells.
Jad Dawkins wassup
Edit: I subscribed
There’s not a single person who watched this movie without watching an explanation video
Wallace I thought I understood but then watched this just to be clear and GOD was I wrong!😂
Not even wendslydale?
G -Man I’m afraid not
I think the movie/shimmer represent depression or loss/change of some kind. The 5 characters represent the 5 paths one can take when battling depression and loss. One, Cassie: she lets her loss define her and when she is taken by the bear the thing that remains is her scream, her loss. She lets it take over. Ventress: she wants her end to come and she welcomes it, in a way she gives up. Gina: she lets it drive her crazy and loses herself completely, similar to how Kane lost his identity and decided to give up. Natalie Portman: sorry forgot her name lol, she arguably goes through all the stages but she is the one that fights the most, she’s the warrior that was changed by this battle. Cass: cass decides to embrace the loss and almost become at peace with her loss/depression and changes
Now that's just boring
A snake eating its self is not destruction, 🤨 it’s a kemet ( Egypt) symbolism meaning for E ternal life
Power Power Or it's ouroboros, which symbolizes a never ending cycle, infinity, or less commonly wholeness.
it can also be Ouroboros the symbol of infinity though i certainly haven't heard of it meaning self destruction before and i believe both infinity and eternal could fit into the meaning better
So if something eats itself it means they live forever? sounds cultish to me....
It's self destruction in a literal sense. The snake is eating its tail, harming its self
Yeah but like isn't THIS whole thing then a metaphor for cancer, and in that, for humanity itself? We are just spreading and spreading (okay yeah we die but does that really matter when the population of earth has grown +1billion in just the last 20 years??) and nothing can kill us / destroy us as a whole, not really, because we're at the top of the foodchain. We are so resourceful that we do inexplicable things (Olympics, eating the hottest pepper, you name it lol) just beacuse we're bored, or just because we can, and WE on the other hand, CAN kill anything. Mostly each other.
So on that note, I think that's what would also happen to _anything_ if cells didn't age. It would be chaos, okay, yeah, it was beautiful in that small area where all kinds of flowers grew at the same time but in the long run they'd need space, and more of it; with natural selection out of the question, everything would just start fighting for territory. That's Nature in general, then imagine what would happen if all of it would just. Grow. All the time. ... Well, though, I guess if Space is infinitely expanding, there would be choices :'D
That trumpet/synth music was creepy yet somewhat calming.
That was exactly my thought too
Yeah, I loved that wub-wub..
The music during the mirror scenes were extremely unnerving
You know a character's evil if they're named "Ventress"
asaj ventress u say?
Any name with the letter "S" at the end is a Villain's name. (No Offense to people with an "S" at the end of their name)
I’m guessing “Ventress” was derived form the Latin word “ventris”, which means “body, belly, or abdomen”. It makes perfect sense when you see what happens to Dr. Ventress at the climax of the film 🙂
Asajj ventress
@@cat157 honestly that's a fucking cool name
this movie did so much right were many before failed.
- putting in a full female cast and don´t make a big thing about it
- cosmic horror at its best
- movie monsters done right
- perfect music score
I really appreciated that
The whole movie i just wondered why they sent those 5 bitches there instead of actual male soldiers&scientists
Kane was def a double from the shimmer because he lit himself on fire with the phosphorous grenade. lena is still human but took some shimmer refraction of her own dna. "half human half shimmer"
Shuman?
@@kenoashire8883 or hummer : half human, half shimmer, full transformer, feel the poweeeer
so the baby will be 3/4 shimmer and 1/4 human? interesting...
@@anonymous4244 depends on which gene is dominant if there even is one but I’m guessing the shimmer gene would be dominant so the kid would be 100% shimmer and that’s how they’ll invade the earth
It still doesn’t make sense why he was dying from organ failure, than suddenly not after the shimmer was destroyed. I think the producers just gave up and just ended it like it was because they couldn’t find any way for the movie to end making sense.
my theory is everybody is high
That's probably it
A reason not to do drugs
On meth
@@rccola6779 meth is a drug
J
"But what if there's a cell that doesn't have this fault?" Cancer. Literally cancer.
Cancer is the same thing as the shimmer, it literally expands infinitly even if the host is dead the cancer will spread. People don't think about that part, but yeah cancer still spreads unless you burn it like the process of cremation.
Yeah, that what bugged me too. Cell death does lead to aging, but it's necessary, otherwise every cell would be cancerous. So this, along with other themes made this film jumbled and self-contradictory
This is actually a theme in the book, where more people have returned from area X. These people die of multiple cancers, as all their cells start to behave like cancercells. It is explained that the mortality of cells is actually necessary. I don't think the movie explains this so well. It takes a lot of left turns from the books in many aspects, and not always for the best.
Renée Timmermans thanks for the explanation!
That's not how cancer works. Cancer is caused because the genetic limit in the cell that stops them from reproducing too much, has been damaged or altered. Causing the cell to divide uncontrollably. A cell that does not age but continues to divide at a controlled rate just like in normal life will not be the same as cancer.
An unaging cell is still just a cell.
A genetically damaged cell is a cancer cell.
That's the key difference.
This movie was visually FANTASTIC.
The shimmer and the shimmer creations were beautiful, especially the colorful flora AND the ice trees by the beach. I just loved that so much.
Also the screaming bear was TERRIFYING.
11:40 My first thought about the bear being able to mimic the dead girls voice was a mutation from a bird or something as many birds have an incredible ability to almost perfectly mimic other sounds. Like the bear had a mutation to draw out other humans with the mimic'd voice of another human screaming for help.
The reason the movie gave, made less sense to me.
C_Dubbzz * it’s supposed to imply the bear stole the voice as it killed the woman - just as it’s insinuated the alien “stole” Lena’s voice when it “killed her” (I think when she gets crushed on the door trying to escape is when she dies... because then she wakes up and the way the film is shot is less obvious as to who is who - then all the face swapping happens)
I think it’s the moment on the crushing door when Lena is transffered but it’s not like invasion of the bodysnatchers... like Lena says they’re all “infected” with it just being there....
I think when Lena looks at the alien all confused as it’s morphing into her - she’s realising that is the moment her perspective is changing and she’s actually “become” the alien - but because the alien is essentially a 4th dimensional creature so Lena doesn’t die... she experienced 2 points of existence at one time through the fourth dimension (eg the alien was able to “teleport” which can only be explained by manipulating our dimension)
I hope this helps - I might do my own explanation of this movie because nobody has covered a few other points
like jabberjays from the hunger games....
Absolutely, and it was stupid of the movie to have a scientist come to the conclusion given, when a scientist of all people should understand vocal mimicry and assume that over something vague and supernatural.
If you look closely, there's a human skull fused into the left side of the bear skull. The reason why the bear could mimic her voice was because they fused together.
It has her skull in the side of bear’s face. It seemingly fused with her. And I don’t know if many birds that can full on mimic a person entire voice, just what they say and maybe their tone.
Me 30 min into an acid trip: “these tabs ain’t shit”
10 minutes later: Annihilation☠️
Yooo same I just watched this movie on acid
My favorite recent sci-fi movie, simply because how everything is connected.
Edit: not mentioned in the video, but the house they stop at, is Lena and Kane's house.
Luke H interesting, how could you tell?
@@keondacook4387 if you go back to the scene where Kane first comes home after being missing, he looks up the stairs where there's light coming from the bedroom. it's the same flight of stairs and hallway as the house Lena and her team stop at.
@@pomping14 but how is that possible?
@@harshsinha2112 how is anything in the movie possible lol
pomping14
SCP foundation vibes are felt clearly here.
its funny how time and time again fire solves everything
Yak 141 Freestyle Rock Paper Scissors, Fire, Earth, Water basically
I think the whole point of that shot with Lena drinking water at the end is actually brilliant. I dont think it has anything to do with blood or showing it was the real lena, but if you look at the shot cinematically, The water on the glass after she takes a drink visually resembles the image of cells dividing or replicating (as you notice the imagry of a cell splitting is heavily used in the movie) and its used to foreshadow that Kane is actually not himself but the "replicated" version of himself. Its honestly such fucking cool shot and it was like a cherry on top of the whole movie. Go back and watch that scene and look at how the water sticks to the glass after she drinks it
i thought the same thing !
Love this
i peeped that too
Southern Reach Team: *hits blunt* What if we just like... sent girls instead of guys... that could work... right?
well it kinda worked
I could be misremembering but I thought they said female cell structure could be more resistant to the Shimmer?
(major secret/spoiler) In the book they sent hundreds of expeditions, and changed the variables each time to see what changed. Its how they know not to take technology into the shimmer, evolution isn’t done through passing genes to offspring, but by merging side by side with whatever’s in area X
@@noname-cq9iy there’s a book?!
@@ObcasusINL Yup, Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance.
That Bear scene in the house was amazing. Never seen anything like it
You might like the movie called The Thing
UK man loves goddesses hell nah that movie hella scary
lol i agree!
Anymore monster movie to recommend?
The Ring left me psychologically scarred so i don't watch them any more
Anyone else notice Lena's thick plot armour when when she got attacked by the bear? Anya was absolutely ripped to shit but Lena got a few nose boops 😂
that's because darth vader was protecting her using the force
anya got killed by the bear bc of who she was. it didn't kill anyone else bc it wasn't a reflection of anyone else
@@tabula_rosa Interesting theory! Could you elaborate?
The soundtrack to the last major scene was fucking FANTASTIC
"What if we nuke the town?"
-Thermite R6
I play R6
You have to nuke the site from orbit, its the only way to be sure...
@@Thunderkat65 Dangit, Ripley was right the whole time.
Yeah lets spread it faster. Lets by giving it more radiation and energy xD
me: *points* yes inquisitor, that area right there.
Inquisitor: *pushes exterminatus button*.
Inquisitor: EXTERMINATUS!
this was going through my mind the entire movie.....
The whole idea of a thing from space heavily mutating everything in its reach reminds me of H.P.Lovecrafts the colour from space
@Raven The Goddess of Duality You know H. P. Lovecraft was the real name of a writer from the 20's. He had been THE guy who had put cosmic horror into the public.
Then you could say that John Carpenter was also inspired by Lovercraft's novel to make the movie "The thing" which is also an alien organism which mutates every living thing it touches into a part of itself
Thank you Heinrich. I was intrigued by your comment and looked up a free pdf (since libraries are closed now). I can't wait to read this short story.
IF anyone wants to read the story Colour From Space by HP Lovecraft: repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/163740/H.%20P.%20Lovecraft%20-The%20Colour%20out%20of%20Space.pdf?sequence=1 (Student free version)
I felt like I was having a fever dream the whole time
The bear scene reminded me of skinwalkers in how they mimic what their victims say before they die to attract new victims!
GREAT WHY DID YOU BRING THOSE 2 NIGHTMARISH CREATURES BACK INTO MY MIND!
P.S: I'm not mad at you and I'm surprised people thought that because I did too
Guillermo Espinoza I heard about Annihilation through the r/skinwalker oof
My brother tricked me into watching that scene with absolutely no context. I actually thought it was a skinwalker until I read the movie's wiki entry.
Proper what went through my mind in the scene
Are "skinwalkers" creatures from a certain movie?If so,what’s the name of that movie?
(PS: I have watched “The Banshee Chapter” which was mentioned in these comments)
Some things I noticed:
The source of the Shimmer was a Lighthouse which is ironic. The purpose of a lighthouse is to prevent ships from crashing - essentially, they prevent their *annihilation* - and yet after the alien crash lands it becomes a source of the very thing it was built to prevent.
The water didn't mutate. The Shimmer can only mutate living things. Likely it was the bacteria in the water that was distorted by Lena's touch seeing as Lena still had part of the alien inside of her by that point enough that it could distort and mutate things in her proximity.
The cells in their bodies were reaching the Hayflick Limit (the number of times a cell can divide in one's lifetime before they can no longer reproduce and you die) a lot quicker than they would naturally. Basically, the Shimmer was speeding up the time it would normally take for someone's cells to die (Lena at one point mentions the Hayflick Limit in what ostensibly appeared to be a throwaway comment to Kane in their bedroom, and Ventress at one point mentions that they were experiencing the early onset of dementia - more proof that their brains were experiencing the effects of old age within just a matter of days of being inside of the Shimmer.)
Without the book's explanation of why Lena and her crew had amnesia when initially entering the Shimmer, it's impossible to discern that Ventress had hypnotized them from just watching the film alone. Alex Garland has purposely omitted this fact from the screenplay meaning that maybe he is suggesting an alternative explanation. My guess would be that entering the Shimmer is like being born; your mind cannot create memories right away because your brain is adjusting and developing (years in this case being mere days).
My guess is that the Shimmer is essentially the alien's way of terraforming. When Lena destroyed the alien, it took the Shimmer with it along with everything that the Shimmer had mutated. Everything that was mutated was connected to the alien in some way. They became a part of it as soon as they entered the bubble. This furthers the belief that the film is basically one huge metaphor for cancer as cancer operates in a similar way which in my opinion is a huge slap in the face to the viewer because unless you look at it holistically, the individual pieces of the movie that support this theory do not make sense by themselves and therefore the film relies on this overarching metaphor to justify things that literally have no basis in any kind of reality that the viewer - even with adequate outside research - can make sense of.
Alas, the alien (and then the Shimmer by dint of being a part of the alien) being destroyed and yet surviving inside of Lena and Kane is a metaphor for how diseases metastasize so that even when you destroy the route cause of it and it becomes benign, if it has spread, it will still exist in some way and become malignant again and spread like before.
One thing I don't understand though is how Lena survived for 4 months inside of the Shimmer with only 2 weeks worth of provisions. Is it because the Shimmer changed her DNA in a way that required for her not to need the same level of sustenance in the form of food that a human would regularly need to survive outside of the Shimmer? Or does time operate differently inside of the Shimmer? It's pretty clear that a day inside of the Shimmer is not the same as a day outside of it. If it were a case of her being inside the Shimmer for 4 months but only remembering a few weeks of those 4 months due to the Shimmer's effect on her brain, then there's still the question of how she survived without adequate provisions. So if time was really operating differently, how so? The sun in the sky would be a dead giveaway that time was not flowing like normal (days would be noticeably longer). But even so, how would the Shimmer affect the sun? If they were asleep for longer than they initially thought when they arrived, then how did they all magically awake at the same time? There is no explanation for why Lena was in there for 4 months but could only remember a few weeks.
When it comes to the food, I think you're right about the Shimmer altering their DNA to where they don't rely on food as much. If you remember back to when they first entered the Shimmer and wake up after setting up camp, Sheppard says that judging by their food reserves, they had been there for four days already. That shows that a) time probably functioned the same in the Shimmer as it did out, and b) they still needed to eat food at that point in the beginning of their journey. However, I think that as they went on and mutated more and more with the Shimmer, they started to rely less and less on food because of their merging with the alien DNA.
Also, when "Kane" drank the water, he had an immediate physical reaction to it. Since he himself WAS the Shimmer (kind of), it further goes to show that the Shimmer does not need normal human nutrients like water (and probably food too). So while they're in there mutating with the Shimmer, they are mutating with something that, verifiably, does not need human nutrients.
If the Shimmer can "refract" a tattoo onto another person's body, a likely explanation for her continued survival is that metabolic power is "refracted" throughout the shimmer, meaning losses from starvation would be shared fairly equally across all the living things within. This would explain why everything seems to flourish in the Shimmer.
As for time, she was knocked unconscious by the Shimmer at the lighthouse, iirc. It could be that her and her doppelganger were out for a very long time.
Peppermint Gal it could also be argued that maybe the doppelgänger stayed within the shimmer for a while and Lena really was in there for only a few weeks, since we only really see 2 nights and a couple days in the actual film, it would make sense time moves normally it’s just the shimmer version stayed inside for a while for whatever reason, maybe to adjust, to obtain memories, to evolve and mature, who knows
Lighthouse: No! you cant just crash ur ship into me! im a lighthouse! im supposed to not let ships crash! T-T
The Shimmer: haha ship go brrrrrrrrrr
The infinity tattoo ends up on lots of their arms. It didn’t start on Lena’s but towards the end, she randomly gains it. Maybe that is some sort of sign?
The tattoo started as the bruise on her forearm. That she mentioned in the boat.
When she takes blood from her arm to check it under the microscope, you can faintly see the outline of a shape.
They also explained the tattoo is a snake eating itself representing humans self destructive nature which was a message shown many times through out the movie
Who else had the tatto
@@sharriceowens913 all of them had the tattoo
It can also represent the infinite cells always duplicating, but idk
One theory I liked about why Lena’s double just willingly died in the Lighthouse was because that was her wish. An it seems the Shimmer or whatever was controlling it, is trying to understand humans in their final moments with wishes of some sort . Or at least the doppelgängers are. This can be seen in three instances. The first when during Joesie death. Right before she died, she went off about not wanting to fight the coming changes to her body and instead welcomed it. Joesie gave up and chose to be apart of the environment in the Shimmer. Second instance being that Kane’s wanted his double to find Lena after he’s gone. It’s assumed Kane’s double was told or communicated this wish to after both Kane and his double came into some sort physical contact. The reason it has to be physical contact is because when Lena hands her double the grenade, during that form of physical contact, the double got the sense of Lena’s wish. That wish being that Lena wanted the shimmer and everything in it destroyed. The theory’s interpretation was that Lena never actually tricked her double, and instead to fulfill her wish.
This doesn’t really answer much else other than giving more explanation to how the doubles worked and function. Probably and more than likely is, alot of holes in this theory. However, I kinda liked it ngl. Idk, this movie didn’t make much sense to me anyway so reading this theory in another comment section kinda helped or at least gave me one way to view the movie
The corpse looks like an infected that died in last of us
A clicker
Facts
Yeah i also thought of a clicker
Things I don't agree with:
Time wasn't warped. Perception and logical thinking was. I believe there was a change in perception; understanding of what is real and relevant to our own beings as humans. IE time. If time really was warped the sun wouldn't have been on it's normal track, which it could not have changed because they were not in a different dimension. They were still on earth under the veil of the shimmer. Also they were using the sun to not only monitor where they were heading (south) but they were using it to signify time.
The "flower people" were not previously people. Everyone was evacuated from that town as said before they entered it. The plants themselves were forming into human shapes via hox genes(?) cells(?).
Ventress was not herself. Ventress was a copy. Made apparent by how she lacked eyes. Because when the one metallic thing is turning into Lena as she hands it the grenade it is eyeless and practically faceless similar to how Ventress looked when we see her in the shimmers bunker.
IT IS NOT A DIMENSION... 'nuff said
The movie is an allegorical exploration of the way people react and cope with trauma and loss. The nuts and bolts of how the shimmer works are totally irrelevant.
Let’s not forget this movie is fiction and created in a large warehouse with green screens. Man bears don’t exist.
ManBearPig exists though. Ask Al Gore.
@@000_DARK I agree, they have to exist, Al Gore was super cereal about this.
Also the water didn't "mutate" as it can't mutate. It only showed the difference between Lena who mutated but was human and Kane who was alien but with human genes. And I think Kane only got sick because he drank water but his body didn't know what to do and it got sick
The ouroboros symbolizes the cyclic Nature of the Universe: creation out of destruction, Life out of Death. The ouroboros eats its own tail to sustain its life, in an eternal cycle of renewal.
Gabriel L. I see someone is a fan of full metal alchemist
@Francisco Duran lmao
finally someone who understands, this was the trippiest movie ive ever seen
Our Rob or Ross. lol wonder if anyone will get that reference
"Annihilation ending explained"
*Doesn't explain the ending, just summarizes it*
I kinda understand it now, he did explain why Lena's eyes glowed like that
Apparently even the book leaves you like *wtf is going on* doesn’t explain shit and is written in journal form. I think this just got away from everyone. The author, the producers, everybody.
That’s all of the “ending explained” video
That bear was super spooky
Craw 3 Teddy bear you wanna try again?
Bro scariest part of the movie
looked like a cow
I was watching with my parents and didn’t know it had horror elements and that scene scared me to bad
🐻
Pure Nightmare fuel:
1) The moving "intestine snake" scene.
2) Natalie Portman & Jennifer Jason Leigh facemorph
3) Bear creature.
Yes, I found the facemorph to be even more disturbing than the bear creature.
Guess I've played too many horror games with weird creatures in them. It didn't faze me that much.
But "Natalie Leigh"... yikes.
You missed the opportunity to say nataleigh
I watched the movie at 1.30 am and now I'm watching this at 4.42
face morph creeped me out the most as well!
for me, i think that the skulls and bones on the beach were actually kanes clones that kept killing each other. Note how on the video camera from the lighthouse, someone (probably one of kanes clone) filmed the landscape and there were no bones or skeletons on the beach like how Lena saw. I thought that was interesting. Also, with kane's clones, did anyone notice that he always had different clothes on? where did he get them from? maybe from the other soldiers because of the refraction and mutation? interesting food for thought. (sorry if there are any typos, you guys get the point ahaha)
Occam's razor. The bones on the beach are his team mates.
those were the originals of the previous expeditions, the people who came back were their dopplegangers
I’m confused, y didn’t Jane just call thor and have him deal with it? I can guarantee the shimmer doesn’t stand a chance against the god of Thunder😤
Why* Use actual words.
@@englishatheart boooo
If it mirrored her why did it run into the door and not the opposite wall
I'm pretty sure it wasn't following her to exact and there are several instenses of the thing having a mind of its own. It might not have wanted her to leave for whatever reason. It's hard to say why though.
@@mfkai6080 probably to learn as much info as possible before killing her. The mirror needed to be a perfect copy in order to leave the shimmer and reproduce outside of ground zero and speed up the process of growth
the magalanium then why did Kane’s doppleganger listen to the real Kane before he lit himself on fire
the magalanium so is Lena dead? Did she lose? Did the thing duplicate her and then leave? Please reply I need to know
it doesn’t necessarily “mirror” it merges, and tries to understand her movements, emotions, breathing, body language, etc.
Those plant people shapes. Aren't people that turned into plants, they're plants that mutated to have the gene that dictates human shape. Good stuff though.
Did you forget the part where the chick actually turned into person shaped plant?
there were plants shaped like people, and she turned into a plant separately.
@@TheDilden We never actually see what happened to her. Plus, the area was evacuated so there wouldn't be anyone left to mutate into plants. The characters even say the plants grew into the shapes.
@kuzi We did see what happened to her as she was walking around the corner flowers were growing out of her arms.
Yea they originally assumed that to be the case until that girl literally turned into one. Proving that those were all people turning into plants. Just like the crazy skeleton and skull in the will with the guys legs sticking out. That was a person.
This movie was amazing ! Much better than I thought. The scene where the alien cloud formed and all those sounds was so well done. Natalie Portman is good.
Yeah id fuck
Apparently that's the music. I had no idea. I thought it was coming from the cloud.
I've watched so many videos about this movie. But this is the best one. It has helped me a lot to understand this movie that I love so much. Thanks 😊
The guy who got turned into a fungus at 9:29 has the same tattoo as Lena and Anya.
Modo I don't see it
You need to watch the film, there's a scene where it's visible, not so much in this video.
Also, the guy on the wall has a tattoo in the same place as Lena's husband, on his chest. I don't know if its the same, but it's in the same place. Also, did her husband have the thick accent that he had in the last video? I don't remember him having that thick of an accent in the beginning.
@@markteetz right that's what really puzzled me he sounded like a completely different person
@@bobbytarantino2214 i think he jad a different accent because he had by that point partly become integrated with some of his fellow soldiers.
holy shit the ambience, sound design, monster design, the setting was beautiful yet horrific, the acting! it was all incredible. this movie was so good to watch. great bloody job Alex Garland.
Alexy, I just watched i.... I feel the exact same way.... mind blown
It had one or two good parts the rest was so full of holes I could strain pasta with it, with the typical oh no it survived ending.
Bruh the acting was really bad apart from Natalie Portnman...
Didnt know Padme was doing this stuff as well as politics
Shakiah Johnson lul
Well, Padme also was a ballerina so, there’s that lol
Annd padme just recently dumped Thor so there that as well
When she was a child she lived with a contract killer
Shakiah Johnson And Padme was also stripping around in London
Bruh I just watched the film, I don't need you to go in detail over the entire plot.. I came for ANSWERS
You new here? That's what he does with every movie he "explains."
So, basically she just *[REDACTED]*
CONTAINMENT BREACH
Mobile Task Force Unit Towl-9 has entered the area
maybe she just [REDACTED] or something
Can't believe she [REDACTED]. Smh
[REDACTED] has escaped containment
I knew there was more channel's doing ending explained on this movie but there's not a ending explained like a foundflix one
Me : finished films, wtf happened, better wait for foundflix then
El_kapitano . You must of got distracted by a fookin laser sight during the movie ;)
El_kapitano 19:03 lol ash
same exact reaction here! also, before I even watched the movie this video came up on my front page recommended. eerie as hell with that timing
Aliens mission completed
El_kapitano foking laser sight
18:41 not a mutation, that's literally just surface tension applying to the liquid...