Sci-fi opening sequence - Annihilation

 

Analysing the opening sequence to Annihilation

Annihilation is a Sci-fi/horror film directed by Alex Garland that released on March 12th 2018 and was produced by Skydance Media, the cast features Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Lee, Benedict Wong and Oscar Isaac.

ANNIHILATION

NARRATIVE

This sequence features a woman in some form of glass room, with an entire room of people wearing hazmat suits watching her from outside, there are a few inside as well keeping their distance and interrogating her over her stay in a mysterious place, they also list some names of people she was with, asking what happened to them - this is met with either ‘I don’t know’, or ‘dead’. This sequence ends on a shot of some form of meteor rapidly crashing into a lighthouse, emitting a cloud-like mist of different bright colours. We can assume that the rest of the movie will go through the woman’s journey in that mysterious place, from how she got there to what went wrong for her to end up in that glass room - we also hope to find out what happened to the people she was with.

TARGET AUDIENCE

This film mainly targets young adult audiences as the woman’s scared and confused demeanour suggests she went through a very harsh experience, including mentioning that people around her died, this atmosphere created suggests that the rest of the film could contain graphic imagery or heavy topics better suited for young adults.

GENRE & TONE

The genre is made clearer towards the end of this sequence, which shows a meteor like object crashing into the earth and into a lighthouse, the collision emits a rainbow coloured mist; the mysterious object crashing into the earth, the unnaturally coloured smoke and also even the characters’ hazmats suit are all reminiscent of the Sci-fi genre. The film’s dark and mysterious tone is set through the eerie and almost frightening setting in the dimly lit glass box, the woman’s scared mannerisms and lost facial expressions reveal she has gone through something serious, which adds to the dark tones. 

CHARACTERS

There are two main characters introduced in this opening; the woman being interrogated, and the scientist interrogating her. All of the characters shown in the room (other scientists in hazmat suits) are observing her on the other side of the glass room, even the ones in the room with her are keeping their distance - this makes her seem like some sort of test subject or hazard, this is further enhanced as she is forced to look upwards to the scientist from a lower angle, making her appear weak and helpless. She looks confused and somewhat frightened, the simple first question she is asked “what did you eat?” leads to her desperately trying to recall previous events with a very lost look on her face, this continues for all of the other questions about what she had been through “inside” that are similarly met with unsure answers; this suggests she was just in some mysterious undisclosed location that caused her to have significant gaps in her memory. The scientist interrogating her seems strongly concerned and similarly lost over the situation; some other characters that could potentially show up later in the movie are also introduced as he lists their names and asks the woman what happened to them, revealing that she is unaware of their whereabouts/fates except for one that is dead, this suggests that they were perhaps with her on her stay in the unknown location.

TECHNIQUES

The main focus of this sequence revolves around the interrogation between the two main characters, this focus is shown through the shot reverse shot consistently cutting between the two at a regular pace with them in the same positioning (directly in the middle third of the shot), sound is also absent in this scene apart from the diegetic dialogue and an eerie high pitched buzzing diegetic sound effect as background, adding to the scene’s main focal point. The dynamic between them of ‘scientist’ vs ‘subject’ is established as the woman’s eyes look over the shot whilst the scientist’s look under, the scientist is also shot at a slightly lower angle - this makes her appear as helpless and him as the stronger individual. The scientist is also under a harsh white light that casts a shadow over his face that is already covered by a protective mask, giving him some fort of eerie anonymity compared to the woman, whose face is uncovered and well lit - essentially giving her no way to hide and leaving her vulnerable.

SUCCESSFUL?

I think that this opening succeeds in engaging the audience as it leaves them with questions about what she is being interrogated over and how she ended up in that situation. Personally however, this sequence feels somewhat underwhelming as it fails to capture the same sort of fascination and genuine eeriness the rest of the movie has, even the short sequence at the end showing the colourful mist and extreme close ups of mysterious changing patterns appears a bit out of place and is simply too out of context to be considered engaging in my opinion. Though the fact that it is engaging at all on its own and leaves questions for the audience to answer afterwards does essentially achieve an opening sequence’s basic goal.