Annihilation trailer takes Natalie Portman through a surreal landscape

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Yesterday, we shared an image of Natalie Portman examining the mouth of an unusual alligator in EX MACHINA director Alex Garland's new film ANNIHILATION. Now a trailer for the film has been released online to give us a look at the "very strange, dream-like, surrealist landscape" that Portman's character will traverse.

Based on a novel by Jeff VanDerMeer, ANNIHILATION has the following synopsis: 

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers―they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding ― but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

There are some very odd things about Area X glimpsed in the trailer, not the least of which are the shots that include artfully displayed human skeletons and the hint of a monster.

On the journey through Area X with Portman are Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson. Also in the cast is Oscar Isaac as Portman's missing husband.

ANNIHILATION is scheduled to reach theatres on February 23rd.