Annihilation’s Cosmic Framing

Why is Alex Garland's Annihilation so creep and unpleasant, yet beautiful and elegant? What makes it feel so...alien? Well, a lot of it has to do with how the film builds up its cosmic 'off-ness', and at the center of it all is this one shot composition: a frame within a frame shot.
Let's take a look.
(Also, of course, the original material is masterful so that helps)

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Extra Credits:

A read on 'frame within a frame' shot:

Timestamp
0:00 Introduction
1:07 The one shot
2:36 The three types
3:34 Accumulation
4:04 i. Uncanny
4:32 Deviation
5:27 ii. Stalker
6:23 Past vs Present
6:48 Set Design
7:40 Light Setup
8:20 iii. The Light
9:08 Invitation
9:53 iv. The Big Bang
10:14 Humanoid
10:30 Force
10:57 Last Act
12:05 Inevitability
13:14 The Beautiful Terror
14:09 The Moment
14:26 Real Annihilation
15:21 Thank You

[SpikimaMovies]

What's YOUR favourite sci-fi horror film??

[John-obvm]

The bear scene and the lighthouse copy scene are two of the most horrifying things I've ever seen in a film. There are horror movies that can terrify through gore and jump scares, but the psychological horror of those two scenes is unmatched. And they fit so well into the idea of The Shimmer's recombination and copying. I will point out that the title Annihilation is also a physics term that describes when a particle and antiparticle collide and are both annihilated.

[zwick]

Your description of the film as “too realistically unrealistic” is spot on. I love the way this film slowly gets under your skin. The music is incredible as well.

[viljamtheninja]

Loved this movie, as a perfect example of true Lovecraftian cosmic horror: the horror of not understanding anything about the nature of what you're facing or what it wants. Most supernatural/alien horror movies depict the aliens as having some kind of scientifically comprehensible biological nature whose drives are predatory, or its ghosts or demons as beings whose drives are essentially based in human mythology and on human emotions. Demons possessing the souls of human beings or whatever still on some level understand the concept of humans and they are based on our world.

The... thing... in Annihilation truly felt alien. As in, stemming from a completely different physical and mental world, with entirely different conceptions. Arrival is the only comparison I can think of that felt genuinely alien.

[Marshmallow_Trees]

There was something so terrifying and tragically…I don’t know, blasphemous about Sheppard’s final cries for help living in the skull bear’s vocal folds.
It felt like a hideous mockery, a defilement.
I loved it.

[nowaht]

I'm glad this film is getting some shine. I feel it is grossly underappreciated

[seraphik]

that four note DAHHH DAH DAH DAHHH motif when the alien finally appears... it lives rent free in my head

[pdzombie]

Annihilation is a contemporary "The Thing", a scif-fi horror masterpiece overlooked now, but later will gain a cult status and will be studied and appreciated. Great video!!! Thanx!!

[lmfao]

Annihilation is one of the fine examples of a cosmic horror

[nomojo]

I love the concept. _Annihilation_ is most often implied at a dominant species' planetary level. This film however, focuses on _annihilation_ at an atomic level. A rearranging of matter that leaves nothing as it was. An exploratory spacefaring civilisation will find _no evidence_ that we ever existed and I find that rather terrifying.

[FieryFlamingFajitas]

If you haven't read the books, I highly recommend. It explains a lot more than the movie does, but in a roundabout way. Once you realise what caused it, where it came from etc, it's such a massive headspin. And what happens to the biologist is haunting as well

[missgingerlocksYT]

All of this is much more powerful when you realize that the entire film is a metaphor for how people deal with trauma and grief.

[marianne]

I think the thing that will stick with me the most about this movie is how I watched it, entranced by the alien and it's oscillating patterns, then showing up to a lecture at university the next day to find the same patten on the lecturers screen. It's called the Mandelbrot patten and even though I can barely remember that class, that pattern stayed with me - all because it had seemed so alien but turned out to be completely rooted in reality and science. Love this movie!

[mochi-vnjg]

I thought it would be an another interesting sci-fi movie, and turned out It’s one of the scariest movies.
The scene where she plays the recorded video in the light house was so intense..

[siobhan_is_on]

The bear scene is honestly one of the scariest scenes in cinema. Like I still think about it and get these full body chills and gut wrenching anxiety. Plus both the physical and sound design are horrifying. 10/10

[thom]

At the end, the intense, gripping, and unique sound track played a major role for me in significantly heightening the effectiveness of the movie's ability to create a sustained and gripping suspense as the fractal like alien mutations unfolded all around in the lighthouse scene. The score during that part of the movie really should be called out.

[samlusby]

The movie as a whole is one of my favorites, but what I think really sets this movie over the top is the soundtrack especially towards the end. The soundtrack with the alien is the most unsettling and beautiful compositions I've ever heard. Its really otherworldy.

[OccupiedMuffins]

We need WAY more cosmic horror, it’s such an interesting type of horror. Even bad cosmic horror is still interesting as hell

[ffffff]

ahhh this is one of my absolutely favourite movies, Alex Garland methodical composition of this movie and the entire audio-visual experience ended up being one of the cornerstones of my artistic development, it may not have been a successful movie or accurate adaptation but I relly hope someone that cares still gives Garland another chance to create like this.

[NoMoreCrumbs]

Annihilation feels like the realization of The Zone as described in the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic. It's a place that cannot be meaningfully understood, only speculated about. Both places change you in ways that are at first subtle, but always permanent