Ex Machina came out of nowhere last year to rack up Oscar nominations and critical acclaim, and Alex Garland is following it up with another thoughtful science-fiction movie. In addition, he’s bringing back Oscar Isaac and turning it into a Star Wars party.
Garland and Isaac are tackling Annihilation along with Natalie Portman. Based on Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, the story follows a team of female scientists exploring “Area X,” a supposed environmental disaster zone in a future America. Portman’s character, never identified by name in the book, has the ulterior motive of looking for her husband, who was lost on an expedition. In the grand tradition of environmental disaster areas with creepy pedigrees, things get weird pronto for the expedition as Things Are Not What They Seem, but Portman is unlikely to stumble across a little green dude with a strange grasp of sentence structure.
Portman will be joined by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, and Gina Rodriguez, and considering how small the cast of the book is, let’s just say you should read it for yourself to figure out what Isaac’s role might be. It’s an especially interesting movie because it’s of the genre of weird science fiction that you very rarely see on screens from Hollywood; the closest film comparison I can think of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, which is something of the same idea albeit likely different in execution. There’s no release date yet, but it’ll start shooting soon in London, and hopefully there will be at least a little room in the movie for some of Isaac’s sweet dance moves.
(Via Tracking Board)