Annihilation

Cinematic in its soaring, hallucinatory strangeness and with an epic sense of mankind unmoored, British writer/director Alex Garland's follow-up to the Academy Award-winning Ex Machina was disgracefully denied a UK theatrical release, going straight to Netflix. When her husband (Oscar Isaac) returns from a covert mission physically and mentally demolished, Natalie Portman's ex-army biologist decides to follow him into the mysterious Area X. Entering a beautiful nightmare through a force field known as "the Shimmer", she joins an all-female team of scientists (including Jennifer Jason Leigh and Thor Ragnarok's Tessa Thompson) who find themselves confronted by mutant creatures, unsettling phenomena and, ultimately, each other. With its dreamy, intoxicating visuals, wild ideas and terrifyingly persuasive performances, this is cerebral, transcendent film-making that offers a chilling portrait of humanity in crisis - fearful, corrupted and searching desperately for answers. Although adapted from Jeff VanderMeer's sci-fi novel, this departs significantly from the original text; if the book provides a rich source of initial inspiration, the film is thrillingly its own beast.