MovieChat Forums > Annihilation (2018) Discussion > Massive Spoiler

Massive Spoiler

posted 7 years ago by ReelWatcher (34)
14 replies | jump to latest

In the end I had the distinct feeling that the alien intelligence, the Shimmer, had the knowledge that Lena had betrayed her husband Kane. The film gives us three very good reasons for this. After Kane has been missing for a year he shows on the first floor of their home but he tells Lena he only begins to remember “anything” when he is looking into their bedroom “with the bed” on the second floor. Did anyone catch that the home in the evacuated and abandoned town was the same house as Kane and Lena’s? That tells you the Shimmer has mirrored Kane’s thoughts and memories while he was in that town but for some reason he was spared until the lighthouse. Perhaps a play on Virginia Wolf’s “To The Lighthouse” of sorts. The Shimmer only lets out Lena because it knows that she would literally die to get one more chance to be with Kane and make it up to him. There is one pivotal scene where they are both at home on the sofa and they both are reading and Kane turns to her and when he looks into her eyes she instantly knows he knows about her affair. Kane is special ops, he would know! Two scenes also with a glass of water magnifying their hands and wedding rings together and in the end interrogation of her hand with the wedding ring on. The Shimmer knew Lena would protect the new and different Kane because she deeply loved him but mostly because she knew that this Kane wouldn’t remember what she had done to him. So both the Shimmer and Lena make out in the end. Anyway what do you think?

[–] [deleted] 7 years ago

I did notice the "house" inside the shimmer was the same. I got it was related somewhat.

YOUR description is the movie I WANTED to see: a well connected and presented explanation about the affair and how it affected them - which was left on the cutting room floor apparently!

Maybe that is what they were trying to show in the film. But a couple of well placed lines could have driven it home.
As is, I feel they failed to deliver. :(

[–] Voided (50) 7 years ago

Interesting. Doesn’t the ending imply that Lena is a duplicate as well....an unreliable narrator. She had that shimmer in her iris and when Kane asked if she was Lena, she didn’t answer.

[–] Bigt (114) 7 years ago

Just saw the film and definitely left feeling that Lena was a duplicate as well.

[–] Renovatio (2990) 7 years ago

Not so much a duplicate as she was altered by the shimmer...

[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

Interesting. Doesn’t the ending imply that Lena is a duplicate as well....an unreliable narrator. She had that shimmer in her iris and when Kane asked if she was Lena, she didn’t answer.

Visually in the light house we know its the original lena but I agree their dead emotionless eyes at the end seemed to want to provoke the audience to question if she's a duplicate but I think it doesn't matter as their memories are identical if she is a duplicate.

I think thats a interesting position that lena is an unreliable narrator if she's a dupliocate meaning we arn't sure how much truth their is since the movie is all her flash back.

I do find it interesting that she mentions seeing duplicates before the bear attack scene which was leading me to belive the team was being duplicated. Like I even thought the military guy with that tenticle moving inside him was a duplicate. I don't know why the narration mentioned duplicatesd so early on but we didn't actually see them till the end.

She mentioned seeing duplicates of form the closer they got to the light house which I took to mean they were going to encounter clones. She then talks about echos and how they all shared them so they wern't hallucinations. I took this to originally mean that they all saw their clones but the other women died before any duplicates started showing up at the light house. :/

The girl that flipped out kept staring at her hands and claimed her fingerprints were moving. I'm thinking she was a duplicate already but the reveal never happened.

[–] bohemianroxie (2478) 7 years ago

Hmm..I kind of felt that she was spared all through the film so that her duplicate would reunite with the Kane duplicate at the end...sort of a Plan B for the aliens.
Her guilt over her affair and her loyalty to Kane is what pushed her to go with the team in the first place...and they counted on this.
Less clear really is how the shimmer was overcome...or did it just intend to infect a few from the start and packed its bags after gathering some for DNA and leaving a duplicate Kane and Lena...mission accomplished.

[–] Renovatio (2990) 7 years ago

I like your interpretation...

It is key for Lena and Kane to get together, to pass on their mutated genes... I thought Kane was a biblical reference (Cain), who kills his brother and populates the world with his decendants, etc...

That's why the duplicate Kane makes it back...

Lena survives also because, unlike her colleagues, she is not damaged in a reproductive sense... The others have cancer, are lesbians or have psychological issues (the physicist self-cutter), etc... Lena is fertile, has a mate and is a more viable candidate to spread her genes...

The movie has an overarching theme about life reproducing itself, adapting through natural selection and mutation and being indifferent to what we need and feel... Interesting movie...

[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

Seems unnessisary to me. The shimmer was already growing and was projected to consume the world after so many years. Plus it was a duplicate that destroyed the shimmer. I'm not sure the alien had clear motives or was acting in a sinnister way. More like it was just digesting and rebuilding everything with a blue/orange http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality mind set unaware of human desire for self preservation. I don't think it duplicated out of the need to be deceptive rather thats just how it adapts to new environments by becomeing its environment (IE duplicates don't even know their own motives or have alien memories).

[–] Renovatio (2990) 7 years ago

Yes... Even without aliens, earth life DNA replicates itself in a non-concious, unpremeditated way... It just the process of life and evolution...

I think the alien is indifferent to us, rather than sinister...

However, the more viable the host for the genes, the more successful the process is... it's Kane & Lena's bond that ensures their survival as a couple and therefore increases their chance for reproduction... I don't think the biblical reference is accidental, why not make it Lena & Johnny instead? Why call the guy Kane? 😁

[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

I don't see the biblical connection with Kane being the one that killed his brother. Still wish we had more explanation as to why the alien became a nebulus cloud of light and stuff. Cause one thing I don't get about SCI-FI is its insistance that DNA represents life.

I suspect Alien life isn't composed of organic matter but something else that doesn't follow evolution like were used too.

The whole shimmer = prism is a odd conclusion to have arrived at given the current evidence even though the plot tries to validate it. I found that a disappointing part of the plot.

[–] Renovatio (2990) 7 years ago

i don't think the alien is meant to be comprehensible... We don't know that it has DNA, we just observe that it alters DNA in the shimmer area...

that the shimmer is a prism is the physicists guess, or rather her way to describing whats going on... it seems the alien might not even be carbon based...

as to the Kane reference, in the bible Kane, the first born human, is banished after murdering his brother and left to wander... That he fathers a city of descendents is the part where it is applicable to the movie... How it connects with Lena's character...

The major theme of life and reproduction in this movie makes it necessary that Lena and Kane mate, as women cannot produce asexually..

[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

Seems an odd way for the alien to go by allowing it self to be destroyed with the hopes that kane and lena yeild offspring.

[–] Elemenope153 (16) 7 years ago

this is my theory:
The floating alien eye is part of the wall. The walls are moving; they are made up of some kind of colonial superorganism that has created a hive underneath the lighthouse, and somehow they together are able to project the shimmer. They are implied by Ventress to have an "unfathomable mind", and the movie suggests that this hivemind may absorb the minds and memories of those consumed in the shimmer. Kane also talks to the camera viewer in his suicide video, asking "are you me? am I you?" because of the scrambled, shared consciousness of all minds lost and living within the shimmer

The eye seems to hypnotize any human that comes into the hole and draw its DNA. Maybe the eye is a defense mechanism by the hive (Kane saw the eye in his video), drawing colonial members from the walls of the hive to create it. The eye then forms the doppelganger using the person's DNA, and then retracts into the wall. The doppelganger only becomes independent from the hivemind after being completely formed. This is why the developing doppelganger knocked Lena out twice (when it had to) instead of just mirroring her 100% absolutely. Not sure why it had to mirror her at all, but the movie says that nobody really understands why the alien does what it does.

The doppelganger was only vulnerable when it was getting its final touches and developing its face, as it was just then gaining its autonomy from the hivemind. This is why it did not mirror Lena and drop the grenade when she ran, and why it seemed to look around perplexed and then burn the whole place down (seemingly by accident), trying to experience the world for the first time w/ burning phosphorus on its hands. Then it retreated into its nest like a wounded animal (to the horror of the hivemind) and burned the entire flammable hive down, which destroyed the crystal trees on the beach and killed the shimmer.

In the end, Lena was so genetically modified by the shimmer that "echoes" of its hivemind were still in her

[–] zeesha (1826) 7 years ago

This Kane is a mirror of the real Kane, so of course he knew what she had done. When he returned home, we saw his cold response to Lena's warm welcome. When she wanted some explanation, a bit anger hidden in his reply "Does it matter?". And in the end, only after he knew this Lena is not the Lena, he stood up and hugged her initiatively.
I don't think the whole thing is a "Master Mind" of the alien intelligence. Their plan A, sending mirror Kane back to Lena, had failed and so "Kane" was disposed right after Lena realized he was not the real Kane. More likely, the alien changed their plan after her mirror stopped Lena leaving the light house. We might think "Destroying the Shimmer" is a thought that Lena put into her mirror's mind, but maybe it is a thought that the alien put into Lena's mind first.