Annihilation

[Cray]

This is a slow-paced movie about a meteorite hitting Earth and setting up a zone where genetic mutation/experimentation takes place. Overall, I found it to be a fairly smart movie, and the ending was intelligible and at least fairly happy. 

It could've been a scary zombie/monster movie but wasn't. The two or three monster encounters are at the level of fighting terrestrial wildlife. Mostly, it's two hours of scientists exploring a weird zone and backflashes examining why each person was willing to go on an apparent suicide mission.

It reminded me quite a bit of 2017's Arrival: slow and thought-provoking. The would go well together in a back-to-back viewing, though they're utterly unrelated.

This movie is a gold mine of Orions Arm ideas. "The Shimmer" and experimentation on local life very much could've been the work of an amoral transapient. Seriously, the idea could've been lifted from some of the horror stories of old OA where modosophonts were often victims of cruel transapients.

Overall, I think the movie was too slow for my taste and trying too hard to be artistic when a more direct storytelling would've done just as well, but I'm glad I saw it. It was an interesting sci-fi film.

PS: The Shadowrunner in me wants to cheer "White phosphorus grenades for teh win!"

[Rynn]

Sounds good It's released here in the UK on netflix next week so I'll look out for it. The description reminds me a bit of Monsters, a 2010 film about a couple travelling through a quarantined area (formally the American/US border) that has been taking over by alien life delivered my meteorite. The aliens aren't really hostile so much as dangerous animals. It's a slow going, more artistic film with some good visuals.

[stevebowers]

This sounds a bit like Roadside Picnic.

[Cray]

Roadside Picnic is a good example, though the unseen aliens seem deliberate in their experimentation. Within OA terms, it could be a lost terraforming or sporetech pod, but a deliberate science payload makes sense, too.

Monsters, which I've seen, is a straight-up monsters-vs-human movie compared to Annihilation. (Though the crashed space probe is a similar to the start of Annihilation.) In Annihilation, mutated local animals are a threat twice, but they're a threat at the same level as the original animals and are sort of incidental rather than the primary threat as in Monsters. The real looming threat is the expansion of the mutagenic "shimmer" bubble, which is genetically twisting everything in the field.

Annihilation is deep and thoughtful, but I'm not giving it an unqualified "Go see it!" There's a lot of good movies coming out this year and if you're on a budget I'd save up for something else.

[Rynn]

Watched it last night and very much enjoyed it. The corruption of the ecology reminded me a bit of The Flow in OA, which is essentially artificial emergent Lysenkoism. For the most part though I got a Lovecraft/Warhammer 40k vibe. It's great to see a solid SF film that dwells on cosmic horror. It did feel like a darker sister story to Arrival. Both involve scientists trying to deal with something that has appeared on Earth for which they don't have any where near a solid understanding. Except in this case the corruption to the ecosystem wasn't trying to communicate (or at least didn't seem to be).

I also liked how whenever the characters tried to theorise what was going on the best they could do is share analogies with each other and shake their heads at how what's happening should be impossible. Even the bit where they discuss the swapping of Hox genes they acknowledge doesn't make any sense. The sense of reality no longer obeying rules humans understand really added to the passive fear the film kicked up.

[JohnnyYesterday]

I really enjoyed it, too. Very weird and unsettling. 

Couple holes: 

I don't buy that elite scientists on the outside wouldn't have worked out in three years that The Shimmer scrambles radio communication, and had some engineers create a telegraph that transmits information using a pulse-based code (e.g. Morse Code) through a thin wire/optical fiber, or had drones with inertial guidance systems carry memory cards back and forth between the team and base.  

I also don't get why they trekked through the swamp if their destination was the lighthouse? Come in from the Gulf in Zodiac boats like a SEAL team.

[Rynn]

I don't buy that elite scientists on the outside wouldn't have worked out in three years that The Shimmer scrambles radio communication, and had some engineers create a telegraph that transmits information using a pulse-based code (e.g. Morse Code) through a thin wire/optical fiber, or had drones with inertial guidance systems carry memory cards back and forth between the team and base. 

I assumed they tried stuff like this and it didn't work. They mentioned sending in animals and drones so it stands to reason they tried simple things. But given how the laws of physics on upwards don't seem to comply anymore in the shimmer No doubt whatever they tried didn't work still. Drones with simple instructions still don't come back, wires fail to transmit anything and whoever went in to trail one doesn't come back etc.

I also don't get why they trekked through the swamp if their destination was the lighthouse? Come in from the Gulf in Zodiac boats like a SEAL team.

I wondered this too. They could have probably done with an explanation as to why they couldn't, like perhaps the whole lake (if it was a lake and not the ocean) being inside the shimmer.

[JohnnyYesterday]

I assumed they tried stuff like this and it didn't work. They mentioned sending in animals and drones so it stands to reason they tried simple things. But given how the laws of physics on upwards don't seem to comply anymore in the shimmer No doubt whatever they tried didn't work still. Drones with simple instructions still don't come back, wires fail to transmit anything and whoever went in to trail one doesn't come back etc.

Maybe. I still don't buy it; if physics was different enough that nothing worked, then people wouldn't work either. The Shimmer would be nearly instantly fatal. At the very least a mechanical telegraph (Spectra fishing line that is tugged in pulses) would work. Kilometers of fishing line would be fairly easy to carry. 

It's the Gulf of Mexico.

[Rynn]

Maybe. I still don't buy it; if physics was different enough that nothing worked, then people wouldn't work either. The Shimmer would be nearly instantly fatal. At the very least a mechanical telegraph (Spectra fishing line that is tugged in pulses) would work. Kilometers of fishing line would be fairly easy to carry. 

Exactly! The cosmic horror nature of the film is that none of it makes any sort of sense. None of the biology is possible, it's completely nonsensical that every organism in the environment would start swapping DNA strands and they'd not only still function but their phenotype would stability blend macroscopic traits. And that's what is so frightening about the Shimmer. It makes no sense yet it's all there right before their eyes. The intention of the film/book is to invoke that sense of horror that comes from humans being totally out of their depth with no ability to understand what is going on. The filmakers clearly thought about it because when the husband (or his clone) comes out of the Shimmer his body starts failing, massive internal bleeding and multiple organ failure. Which is exactly what you'd expect if you could somehow take a person and randomly cut and edit the DNA of each tissue with samples from other organisms.

I expect that if you tried to make some sort of mechanical telegraph no signal would be received outside more than the mechanical equivalent of static as the pulsing of the tugs was randomised as it left the shimmer. Though you'd probably just hear nothing given that every team that enters is seemingly mentally compromised, to the point where they skip entire days with no memories.

[Drashner1]

Hm. Haven't seen the movie yet, although I plan to, either in the near future or when it's out on video.

Anyway, thinking about this in OA terms...

If the Shimmer were a transapient level angelnet (incorporating transap level nanobots and such), could it perhaps perform the effects you describe - re-engineering lifeforms into hybrids of different lifeforms, either via DNA swapping, or (perhaps more likely) just raw bodymodding, while simultaneously acting as a life support system to keep the modified lifeforms alive via direct artificial intervention. When life forms leave the Shimmer, the life support stops and they essentially fall apart.

As far as signals of any kind being blocked from entering/exiting the Shimmer - an angelnet could use a variety of methods to do this, depending on the communications medium. It could jam electronic signals, sabotage/destroy drones, and mess with telegraph wires of whatever sort. It could also mess with human thought and memory, either via infecting them with nanotech devices that enter the brain or using perception hacking technology to alter or erase short term memory, alter sensory information, etc.

Humans from our time/place would probably lack the tech (and certainly the background knowledge) to detect the devices doing all this, or at least from what I've seen of the previews of the film, the team entering the Shimmer probably wouldn't have the equipment to detect it.

Not saying this is how the Shimmer in the film does its thing. But it's interesting to think about how such a thing might work in OA.

Thoughts?

Todd