Civil War (2024)

Direction: Alex Garland
Country: USA 

In Alex Garland’s latest film, Civil War, a tale of courage unfolds against the backdrop of a dystopian landscape ravaged by chaos. Led by renowned war photojournalist Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), a small group of journalists, including Reuters reporter Joel (Wagner Moura), embarks on a perilous journey across a fractured country to interview the authoritarian US President in Washington, D.C., before the city falls to rebel forces. Accompanying Lee and Joel are veteran NY Times journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), considered too old for the mission, and aspiring photojournalist Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny), who flagrantly tags along. 

The tense narrative predominantly draws from violence and human cruelty, yet it doesn't forsake humor, extracting it from unexpected situations. Little is explained about the motivations of the factions involved in the conflict, but there’s a stark warning about the consequences of extremism instead. While critical of war obsession and racism, the film emphasizes the neutrality of the journalists as they navigate the chaos with determination and addictive voyeurism.

Departing from his previous sci-fi works like Ex Machina (2014) and Annihilation (2018), Garland injects furious nihilism in his staggeringly realistic depiction of a near-future setting that, as it should, leaves audiences feeling exhausted and wrung-out. Flawless performances, including a notable appearance by Jesse Plemons as an ultranationalist militant, combined with a timely soundtrack featuring songs by Suicide and De La Soul, and a powerful score by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, contribute to the film's impact. Civil War is a stone-cold stunner that captivates from start to finish.

Men (2022)

Direction: Alex Garland
Country: UK

Following two successful sci-fi thrillers (Ex Machina, 2014; Annihilation, 2018), The British writer-director Alex Garland shifts his focus to the folk horror genre with Men, a vertiginously styled pic with a lot to admire and think about. The film is loaded with dark mysticism, hair-raising choral music, haunting images, and a negative energy that puts you alert at all times. 

The disturbing story, which opens and closes with Lesley Duncan’s beautiful “Love Song”, follows Harper (Jessie Buckley), a haunted woman seeking peace and some spiritual healing after the death of her husband, James (Paapa Essiedu). Crushed by painful memories, she decides to travel solo and rent an old manor in the Southwest rural region of England. Once arrived, she finds a group of weird men (brilliantly performed by Rory Kinnear), each of them embodying a perfectly identifiable male archetype. They all seem to want a piece of her soul, and scary visions succeed one after another, making us restless.

Metaphor and symbology - most of it related to rebirth/reproduction - are present everywhere in a work of immense and intense emotional vigor that opposes misogyny with Spartan sturdiness. The film takes you to really creepy places but the inscrutable, deranged denouement, despite being suffused with grotesque and creative imagery, leaves you in a sort of suspended state; a sort of agonizing and exciting enigma. I experienced the same feeling with films by David Lynch, Peter Strickland and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The logic of things is left open to debate, but I would add that Garland missed the very final note of a grandiose symphony. He wanted so badly to take the film to certain extremes that he impaired it at the last minute by not giving a plausible resolution to the story. 

However, the qualities we find here - the score/sound design by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury (a combination of eerie, ethereal and penetrating sounds) is absolutely phenomenal - easily overcome the quibbles. Whether this cryptic nightmare is your cup of tea or not, it’s very hard to ignore it.

Annihilation (2018)

Directed by Alex Garland
Country: USA

English filmmaker Alex Garland has a penchant for intellectual sci-fi thrillers. The follow-up to the well-received “Ex-Machina” is another uncanny puzzle entitled “Annihilation”, the first installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy, originally penned by novelist Jeff VanderMeer. Garland adapted it for the screen, calling Natalie Portman to impersonate a biology professor and former soldier who joins a female team of military scientists to undertake the oddest mission ever.

As a premise, the film presents us Lena (Portman) under interrogation by U.S. Government agents about a classified expedition into an unearthly, abnormal phenomenon known as The Shimmer. She was the only survivor from a psychedelic experience that also involved psychologist/team leader Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), paramedic Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), physicist Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson), and geologist/surveyor Cass Sheppard (Tuva Novotny). Former military incursions into the affected area, which covers a national park, were unsuccessful, and no one ever returned to tell the story, except for Sargent Kane (Oscar Isaac), Lena’s husband. However, he seems to have lost his memory and falls gravely ill with multiple organ failure, most likely due to virus or radiation exposition. The rumors are that, once there, people lose their memories and then are mysteriously killed, or get delirious and start killing one another.

Thus, there's plenty of bite here, even before the team steps into the iridescent electromagnetic field that identifies The Shimmer. Once in there, confronted with several technical problems and time lapses, they observe that the landscape and all types of life form are mutating. It’s not uncommon to find plants with a human shape and they even see trees made of crystal. However, if this certainly won’t scare you, punctual grotesque encounters with wild, abhorrent, carnivorous creatures will make you twist on your seat. Possible hallucinations? The dreamlike tones are properly set to make us alert as we penetrate in this chimerical world of horror and beauty. Macabre footage by the precedent explorers is found in an old warehouse, which bemuses the brave women even more.
According to the ice-cold Dr. Ventress, who shows there's something wrong with her as she lectures Lena about self-destructiveness, the goal is to reach a lighthouse at the center of The Shimmer.

We’ve all seen this type of story many times before and its moods are not a novelty either. Still, Garland, who has the capacity to develop ideas beyond the superficial, conquered me with a magnificent last part, superbly represented through visually mind-blowing images drowned in gorgeous special effects. It’s the psychological side of the story that is challenging as it also brings thrills and excitement.

Fusing elements of “Alien”, “Predator” and “Arrival”, “Annihilator” is a dark-tinged equation whose resolution whets our appetite for the upcoming sequels.