12 Movies Literally ONE Step From Perfection

The Beach scribe Alex Garland waited until 2018 to follow up his 2014 hit Ex Machina with another trippy sci-fi headf***. An adaptation of New Weird pioneer/ cult author Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name, 2018’s body horror meets alien invasion mystery Annihilation was a beautifully realized strange and existential trip—for the most part.

But the viewer is left wondering “what was the point of those tiny, minor snatches of glimpsed backstory which we get early on in this otherwise tight, efficient sci-fi thriller?”

Does anyone care that Natalie Portman was (maybe?) cheating on her soldier husband Oscar Isaacs? Does it ever come up again, either in dialogue or less obvious character motivations?

Nope! It’s simply thrown in for the sake of it, somewhat pointlessly.