Annihilation
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: February 23, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
79
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 51 Critic Reviews
Positive:
44
Mixed:
5
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 12, 2018
Portman’s high-tension acting, her inability to relax, suits the material down to the ground. It’s one of her best performances, moving through credible grief and bewilderment, but facing up bullishly to her fears by the end, and finding some kind of exhausted resolve to interrogate them. Read full review
100
EmpireJonathan PileMar 12, 2018
Drawing on mythology and body horror, Annihilation is an intelligent film that asks big questions and refuses to provide easy answers. Sci-fi at its best. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperFeb 21, 2018
Garland (adapting a novel by Jeff VanderMeer that is the first of a trilogy) does a masterful job of building the mystery, dropping plot hints like so many bread crumbs, jolting us with “gotcha!” moments. Read full review
100
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezFeb 21, 2018
Annihilation is mesmerizing and its awe-inspiring conclusion will leave your mind blown and splattered against the wall. In its final, surreal biopsychological moments the movie goes to an astonishing interstellar gear. Read full review
100
Screen DailyTim GriersonFeb 21, 2018
Able to generate dread and awe with equal skill, Annihilation is an absorbing amalgam of genres and influences, all coming together to produce a dazzling creation as vivid as the hybrid life forms our heroes encounter on their perilous journey. Read full review
95
UproxxVince ManciniFeb 22, 2018
It proudly exists on a visceral, sub-verbal level; that’s part of the magic of it. It’s a movie that’s easy to spoil and hard to describe, where mystery is most of the point and interpretation tends to cheapen. Which is to say: just go see it. Read full review
91
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallFeb 22, 2018
Alex Garland’s Annihilation is a bracing blend of cerebral sci-fi and grindhouse terror, a genre movie that’s more, maybe too much for some viewers. Read full review
91
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonFeb 22, 2018
It’s one of the most arresting, affecting science fiction movies of the last few years, and certainly one of the best films to see release in 2018 thus far. It’s ambitious and haunting, which makes its international streaming release all the more tragic. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattFeb 21, 2018
It’s the kind of film that leaves you dazzled and a little shell-shocked — and not entirely sure whether your own moviegoing DNA hasn’t been altered a little in the process. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 21, 2018
At once a gripping jungle survival thriller and an alluring sci-fi puzzle, Garland’s heady gambit confirms he’s one of the genre’s best working filmmakers. Read full review
90
VoxAlissa WilkinsonFeb 23, 2018
It’s a beautiful and haunting film, and another examination of what makes us human from Garland. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternFeb 22, 2018
The result is daringly original and frequently beautiful, a shimmering treat from a singular intelligence. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzFeb 22, 2018
The movie is as gorgeous as it is disturbing, and that’s a powerful combination. It may be about the beginning of the end of the world or the beginning of something else entirely. I’d be lying if I said I understand every aspect of the film, but I was engrossed trying to. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangFeb 21, 2018
Its most impressive achievement may be how easily it welds the mechanics of genre and the cinema of ideas. Garland's movie has its grisly flourishes, but unlike so many thrillers that preoccupy themselves with spectacles of death, it's more interested in pondering the strange, inextricable link between creation and destruction. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeFeb 21, 2018
For those willing to put in the effort, Annihilation achieves that rare feat of great genre cinema, where we are not merely thrilled (the film is both intensely scary and unexpectedly beautiful in parts) but also feel as if our minds have been expanded along the way. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyFeb 21, 2018
To be sure, the climax delivers copious amounts of blood and guts and tension and look-away temptations. But there are enough interesting surprises, in addition to the narrative promise, to provide for the presumed, and now quite desired, sequels. Read full review
90
ScreenCrushMatt SingerFeb 21, 2018
It is tough, bleak, brutally intense, and genuinely scary - not in the cutesy cathartic way of most horror films, but in a way that makes you ponder the nature of existence and leaves you with a pit in your stomach. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliFeb 23, 2018
Liking "Ex Machina" is no guarantee of liking Annihilation or vice versa. In terms of tone, Annihilation is a close cousin to "Arrival." There’s the same dark atmosphere and bleak sense of discovery. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoFeb 23, 2018
An ambitious, challenging piece of work that people will be dissecting for years. Don’t miss it. Read full review
88
Paste MagazineWill LeitchFeb 22, 2018
This is a film that wants to make you feel as confused and terrified as the characters you’re watching. In this, it is unquestionably successful. Read full review
88
USA TodayBrian TruittFeb 22, 2018
A beautiful and brutal headtrip exploring the positives and negatives inherent in mankind's evolution, with characters struggling against losing themselves to something alien. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzFeb 22, 2018
Yet the most striking, shaking moment in Annihilation has nothing to do with Area X or the perverted flora and fauna within it. Rather, it's when the film's spare score is interrupted by the folksy strains of Crosby, Stills & Nash's Helplessly Hoping. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonFeb 22, 2018
Portman is eminently watchable as Lena, who slowly realizes that she’s in way over her head. And “Ex Machina” star Isaac virtually redefines creepiness. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversFeb 21, 2018
Garland need make no apologies for Annihilation. It's a bracing brainteaser with the courage of its own ambiguity. You work out the answers in your own head, in your own time, in your own dreams, where the best sc-fi puzzles leave things. Get ready to be rocked. Read full review
85
TheWrapFeb 21, 2018
A psychological mystery laced with environmental disaster and alien-scary juju, Alex Garland’s elegantly unsettling Annihilation is here to shake up your night at the movies in the most mind-bendy way possible, but without foregoing the pleasures of an ambitious sci-fi entertainment. Read full review
83
The VergeTasha RobinsonFeb 23, 2018
Annihilation is a portentous movie, and a cerebral one. It’s gorgeous and immersive, but distancing. It’s exciting more in its sheer ambition and its distinctiveness than in its actual action. Read full review
83
The Film StageJordan RaupFeb 21, 2018
A shimmering example of what Hollywood sci-fi can achieve when the aim is high, Annihilation is a gripping, mystifying adventure and proof that a transportive experience is more rewarding than a story with clean-cut resolutions. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfFeb 22, 2018
Garland’s creeping pace lulls you on an almost molecular level; he’s made something akin to an end-of-the-world film, but one in which the changes afoot might not be wholly bad, title be damned. Read full review
80
Vanity FairRichard LawsonFeb 22, 2018
Garland is a breathtakingly talented filmmaker, one whose few second-film stumblings—the unwieldy scope of his ambitions, his scrambling for an ending—are forgivable. Annihilation murmurs and roars with ideas, a dense and sad and scary inquest into life and self. It’s a true cinematic experience. Read full review
80
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlFeb 21, 2018
It’s often inspired in its cutting and composition, and Garland (Ex Machina) has crafted sequences of strange splendor, including a too-short cosmic light show. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaFeb 21, 2018
To mistake Garland’s succession of haunted-house-like spectacles as Acid: The Place would be missing out on so much emotional work that he’s doing. (Although, the squeamish should be warned those spectacles range from mildly disturbing to gory and disgusting to absolutely terrifying.) Read full review
80
The GuardianBenjamin LeeFeb 21, 2018
Annihilation is more than mere visuals and it will shock, fascinate and haunt whatever screen it’s watched on. Read full review
75
New York PostSara StewartFeb 22, 2018
Ambitious and messy, Annhilation will likely leave you with more questions than answers. Mine is: “When can I see it again?” Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Feb 22, 2018
If "Ex Machina" was a mess of provocative, half-formed thoughts on gender, creation, and desire, Annihilation locates something closer to a clear, cogent thesis: that there’s nothing scarier than looking at those closest to you, or even yourself, and not recognizing the person staring back. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJake CoyleFeb 22, 2018
Rarely has a film conjured such a thick atmosphere of dread and wonder as “Annihilation,” a movie that unfolds, grippingly, as an existential mystery. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenFeb 22, 2018
The visuals are gorgeous. The mood is unsettling from start to finish. Annihilation is a strong sophomore effort from a very talented filmmaker. Read full review
75
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonFeb 22, 2018
Garland’s alien biodome is a trippy mixture of tactile old school hardware and computer-generated images. It combines to give his brightly ominous new world a sinister sheen, especially when showing how it has consumed/subsumed the old seaside community it has displaced. Read full review
75
IGNJim VejvodaFeb 21, 2018
Annihilation isn’t always as consistently well-executed or involving as it might have been, and it’s told in a manner that robs the story of some much needed life-or-death suspense, but overall it’s a bold undertaking that doesn’t play it safe and features some strong performances. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisFeb 22, 2018
Mr. Garland likes to play with tones, mixing deadpan in with the frights, and later “Annihilation” becomes something of a head movie, swirling with cosmic and menacingly lysergic visions. He keeps the tension torqued throughout this phantasmagoric interlude, sustaining the shivery unease that is one of this movie’s deeper satisfactions. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerFeb 23, 2018
Garland is great at setting a tone of creepy ominousness, and the women’s foray into the swampy terrain is an unnerving blend of lustrous loveliness and split-second horror. But the visual effects throughout the film are often disconcertingly cheesy, and the pulp elements pile up with an extra serving of gore. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayMay 12, 2018
It’s when the dream of “Annihilation” collides so felicitously with lived reality that the film coalesces and takes hold. It may be broken eventually, but for a while the spell is a powerful one, and nearly irresistible. Read full review
63
Boston GlobePeter KeoughFeb 22, 2018
As a portfolio of visionary images of surreal landscapes and hallucinatory flora and fauna, the movie sometimes dazzles. But as a metaphorical narrative, it often fizzles. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineHenry StewartFeb 21, 2018
Annihilation gets momentum from the deeper it pushes into the uncertainties of ecology and the self. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 21, 2018
The movie feels torn between styles and intentions. It’s trippier than “Ex Machina,” and Garland makes a valiant go of its concerns, but Annihilation feels like a short-story amount of story pulled and twisted into feature length. Read full review
60
SlateInkoo KangFeb 22, 2018
Whatever the working balance is between mystery and revelation, Annihilation, the new sci-fi–horror drama from Ex Machina writer-director Alex Garland, never quite pulls it off. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe DziemianowiczFeb 21, 2018
Your mileage may vary — along with patience. Despite all the talk of the Shimmer, Annihilation sputters. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 22, 2018
A movie worth seeing, worth mulling over, but not necessarily enjoyed. Read full review
45
The AtlanticChristopher OrrFeb 23, 2018
Though Garland’s film is decidedly creepy and often ravishing to look at, it’s hard to shake the sense that, beneath its highbrow patina, it is an intellectual muddle. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesFeb 28, 2018
Why do I feel like a bummed-out tourist gone home with dashed hopes? “I was promised a new-millennium mindfuck, and all I got was this crummy pick-the-bodies-off horror.” Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedFeb 27, 2018
Annihilation is a demented science-fiction comic book of a movie that makes less sense than a butterfly mating with a buffalo. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleFeb 22, 2018
Thinking people also like a little drama with their science fiction. On that score, Annihilation comes up short. Read full review
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