Just under three months ago, we shared the first trailer for EX MACHINA director Alex Garland's ANNIHILATION, which is based on a novel by Jeff VanDerMeer. With the release of the film now just two months away, another trailer has been released online that lets us in on a bit more of the story and shows more of the "very strange, dream-like, surrealist landscape" the film's characters make their way through… Not to mention the creatures they encounter there.
Starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson, 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.
Oscar Isaac is also in the cast, playing Portman's husband.
The first trailer got me intrigued, and this second one successfully does its job of making me want to see ANNIHILATION even more than I did before. A great cast, stunning visual effects, and guns being fired at large monsters? I'm in!