Jeff VanderMeer – The Southern Reach Trilogy I: Annihilation (2014)

March 8, 2020

I picked up Annihilation because the film struck something of a chord with me. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was about the movie, but something about it had me wanting more, wanting to peel back more layers, or more-like, consult the source material in the search for answers to this intriguing puzzle.

In book one of the Southern Reach trilogy however, there are no answers. Or, no significant ones. Where the movie channeled Lynch and Kubrick into super-glossy sci-fi New Weird, the novel revels in the smaller details, with intense, skin-crawling biological descriptions and first hand accounts from the unreliable narrator that serves to only deepen this visceral mystery.

Once more, as with the movie, I have absolutely no fucking clue as to what the absolute fuck is going on, but this time I don’t find that I mind so much. Haunting, unsettling, and just downright bizarre in all the right ways, I would recommend Annihilation to anyone who doesn’t mind their sci-fi or horror being a little more abstract. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.