FAQ

Annihilation is written and directed by Alex Garland, based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer.

The inspiration of the novel was animals and vegetation that VanderMeer has seen on a 14-mile (23 km) hike through St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Florida for over the past 17 years, also, VanderMeer visited the St. Marks Lighthouse that inspired one of the settings in the novel.

There are many differences, such as:

• In the book, none of the group of explorers is ever identified by name. The main characters are referred to as the biologist, the biologist's husband, the anthropologist, and the surveyor. The leader is the psychologist. The story is told through the biologist's field journal.

• There is no Shimmer in the book, instead, the events take place in an uninhabited area known as Area X, an unspecified coastal location that has been closed to the public for 30 years.

• In the book, the biologist's husband, along with the others in the previous expedition, died of cancer a few months after he returned unexpectedly from the expedition.

The alien's action against the Earth creatures is similar to what humans do with mice in laboratories. The Extraterrestrial beings are more like superior advanced species rather than enemies, they do the DNA mutation (i.e. "refractions") in all living creatures (e.g. the alligator with rows of shark-like teeth, deer have plants instead of horns, bears that had human internal organs, plants have human-like forms, etc.) for study and research purpose.

This theory is supported by the fact that Shimmer collapsed and fades away, and the annihilation process stops, once the Alien creates humanoid entities (doppelgängers) that look and speak like the original humans. Also, from the final scene, We can assume that the goal of the aliens is to live -like and among- the humans.