Watching Alex Garland’s evolution as a creative mind over
the last two decades has proven quite fascinating, to the point where
‘evolution’ is the most apt way of describing his trajectory. Starting as a
novelist, providing source material for one of Danny Boyle’s most underrated
films with The Beach, he went on to collaborate with Boyle more directly, writing the scripts
for some of his more widely-celebrated ventures like 28 Days Later. Then he set out to bring his
own scripts to life with Ex Machina, one of the strongest sci-fi offerings of
the last handful of years.
But this film, Annihilation, is the final test. He’s proven
that he can write for multiple media forms, from novels to screenplays to video
games, and he’s proven that he’s capable of visual storytelling on top of that.
Now, it’s time to see if he can turn the work of someone else, in this case
being Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name, into a story that still carries
his fingerprint.
