Annihilation

A major theme in the movie Annihilation is the mutation of biological life. The area affected by the alien lifeform that landed on earth was called the shimmer. It refracted everything in its vicinity from the life forms within it, to the buildings, and even the light that passed through it. Plants and animals within the shimmer would have their DNA tampered with and grow strange traits that originally weren’t present in their genes. The characters that interred the shimmer were changed throughout their journey to the center. They grew chloroplasts, picked up traits of other groups that had entered before them, and one even blossomed into a creature that was more plant than human. When asked if she was the same person that she was before entering the shimmer, the main character was unable to say that she was. This is because her journey through that strange world had changed her both physically and mentally. This theme of the mutation of cells was also seen as a cancer, which itself is an unhealthy mutation in cells. The doctor that was sending groups into the shimmer and eventually went in herself had a terminal form of cancer. The shimmer itself could be seen as a form of cancer. The shimmer was just a small spot on the world which altered its surrounds and created something unsustainable to the system it was surrounded by. It clearly had no bad intentions but if its constant spread wasn’t stopped it would have engulfed and destroyed its host in the same way cancer can.