Weird monsters and monstrous media: The adaptation of Annihilation

Abstract

This article scrutinizes Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation (2015) and its cinematic adaptation directed by Alex Garland (2018) with the aim of investigating the tensions between the weird and visualization. It argues that it is in the monstrous, weirding function of the medium in Annihilation that the weird persists. By engaging with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of becoming, I argue that the computer-generated imagery of the Annihilation film invites us to think of digital images themselves as monstrous – an articulation of the molecular, cellular, trans-species exchanges and mutations of the film, which sustains a movement towards becoming-imperceptible while becoming-visible. I argue that by releasing the monstrous, weird-making and world-making qualities of the literary and cinematic medium, the two works open us up to flowing articulations of the world that are not centred around the human but directed towards an appreciation of our existence in an incommensurable, incomprehensible, but nonetheless real and material, more-than-human embeddedness.