The Spirituality of Annihilation
Annihilation is a film deeply imbued with spiritual undertones, exploring the human condition through themes of disconnection, transformation, and the dissolution of boundaries between self and environment. At its core, the film uses the Shimmer—a mysterious, iridescent phenomenon—as a metaphysical space where characters confront their alienation and seek reconnection, suggesting a spiritual journey beyond the physical.
The theme of disconnection and alienation sets the stage for this spiritual exploration. The characters—Lena, Kane, Dr. Ventress, Josie, and others—enter the Shimmer already estranged from themselves and the world. Lena’s strained marriage, marked by Kane’s absence and her own guilt, reflects a loss of affection and intimacy. Josie’s self-harm and Ventress’ detached intellectualism further illustrate a psychological alienation where the self and reality feel unreal. Within the Shimmer, this disconnection becomes literal as their communication devices fail, isolating them from the outside. Yet, this mirrors their pre-existing metaphorical disconnection, amplifying the spiritual void they seek to fill.
Water emerges as a central motif and symbol of spiritual transformation. It flows through key moments: Lena and Kane’s tender connection over a glass of water, later tainted by his blood; the Shimmer’s oil-and-water-like sheen; and the alien’s landing by the sea. Water reflects duality—echoes, divided selves, and the interplay of destruction and creation. Lena’s tattoo, an ouroboros-like “echo,” and the glass of water at the film’s end, shimmering with cell division, suggest a spiritual rebirth. The canoe scene on water, where Lena learns of her companions’ loneliness and depression, marks a turning point—her bruise morphing into a tattoo, symbolising an integration of pain into identity. Water also cradles moments of revelation, like the mutated aquatic life and the coral-like crystallisation of a dead soldier, blurring lines between human and environment.
This blurring is the film’s spiritual heart. Josie, uncomfortable in her own skin, merges with the Shimmer’s flora, becoming a human-tree hybrid—a literal joining with the environment that transcends her alienated self. The Shimmer poses a spiritual question: “Where do I end and my environment begin?” It’s a space of connection with everything, where destruction births something new, as Lena notes: “It’s not destroying. It’s making something new.” Her final embrace with Kane’s doppelgänger, both aglow, signifies a reconciliation of fragmented selves, a spiritual unity forged through annihilation. Thus, Annihilation frames spirituality as a process of dissolving boundaries—between self and other, human and alien, loss and renewal—offering a haunting, transformative vision of becoming whole.
ANNIHILATION ANALYSIS
Annihilation Plot: A biologist's husband goes missing, prompting her to volunteer for an expedition into an environmental disaster zone. However, she encounters unexpected challenges. The team comprises a biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, a surveyor, and a linguist.
Annihilation Subject Matter: Annihilation explores the human condition, focusing on how individuals contribute to their own self-destruction and the deterioration of their relationships.
Annihilation Story: Lena embarks on her journey as a despondent and self-absorbed individual, caught in a cycle of self-destruction and denial. Throughout the narrative, she transforms into an entity that is introspective, spiritually connected, and complete, as symbolised by the tattoo and glass of water at the film’s conclusion.
THEMES OF ANNIHILATION
Loneliness – Lena’s partner’s away in the military, then dead. Cass Sheppard’s child died. Dr Ventress’ effort to understand others is to ward off her own loneliness. They all chose to enter the shimmer.
Longing – Sheppard’s daughter who died of cancer, the dead husband – longing for the past. Lena’s memories. One memory she says to Kane, “What do you think I do when you’re away? Do you think I’m out in the garden, pining; looking up at the sky?” (foreshadowing) “Why aren’t you here?” – Lena.
Loss – When Kane returns home while Lena is painting the room, a song by Crosby and Stills is playing about loss: “He worries, did he hear a goodbye, or even hello. They are one person, they are two alone, they are three together, they are for each other. Stand by the stairway, you’ll see something certain to tell you, confusion has its cost. Love isn’t lying, it’s loose in a lady who lingers, saying she is lost forever, and choking on hello. They are one person…” The loss of a lover, the loss of a child, the loss of happiness, of belonging, the loss of hope, and ultimately the loss of the self. Dr Ventress says to Lena, “Nothing comes back.” Lena replies, “But something has.” Note that she didn’t say ‘someone’ or ‘my husband’ or ‘Kane’; she says ‘something’. She knows already that Kane isn’t her husband.
Lust – Seen in Lena’s memories
Love – Is love ephemeral? Does love last? What is love? What does it look like and sound like? Why do we love? Does love self-destruct?
Lying – Lena kept facts about herself from the group, then Anya Thorensen accused her of lying. Was Lena lying? Did she lie to herself? Did she lie to her husband, Kane? How did Lena react when she was confronted about her lies?
Disguise – Do we disguise our true selves? Do we wear a disguise when around others? Do we hide our feelings? Our emotions? Our thoughts? Why do we disguise these things? Why hide the truth?
Despair – (loss of hope). Were all the women in a state of despair before entering the shimmer? What caused them to lose all hope? Did they disappear into despair?
Depression - Are you your own worst enemy? The weight of your negativity can hold you back. See Lena when she is confronted by herself. What does she do? She screams at herself and then tries to run away from herself. But she won’t let herself run or leave. The weight of herself drags her down to the ground.
Decay – Moral decay, decay of values, decay of the self, biological decay, mental decay, decay of love, decay of hope, cancer (Dr Ventress and Sheppard’s daughter who dies of leukemia)
Destruction - Self-Destruction - Annihilation - Thorensen was an addict. Josie self-harms.
Dr Ventress: It's destroying everything.
Lena: It's not destroying. It's making something new.
Lena: Why did my husband volunteer for a suicide mission?
Dr Ventress: Is that what you think we're doing? Committing suicide?
Lena: You must have profiled him. You must have assessed him. He must have said something.
Dr Ventress: So you're asking me as a psychologist?
Lena: Yeah.
Dr Ventress: Then, as a psychologist, I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide, and almost all of us self-destruct. In some way, in some part of our lives. We drink, or we smoke, we destabilize the good job... and a happy marriage. But these aren't decisions, they're... they're impulses. In fact, you're probably better equipped to explain this than I am.
Lena: What does that mean?
Dr Ventress: You're a biologist. Isn't the self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?
Division - cell division, partnership division, group division
Lena: You take a cell, circumvent the Hayflick limit, you can prevent senescence.
Kane: I was about to make the exact same point.
Lena: It means the cell doesn't grow old, it becomes immortal. Keeps dividing, doesn't die. They say aging is a natural process, but it's actually a fault in our genes.
Duplicates – Duplicates of form Echoes. Lena’s tattoo.
Lena: The mutations were subtle at 1st; more extreme as we got closer to the lighthouse. Corruptions of form. Duplicates of form.
Lomax: Duplicates?
Lena: [She looks at the tattoo on her arm & lifts her arm up] Echoes.
Lomax: Is it possible these were hallucinations?
Lena: I wondered that myself... but they were shared among all of us. It was dreamlike.
Lomax: Nightmarish?
Lena: Not always. Sometimes it was beautiful.
[the movie then cuts back in time to show beautiful translucent single-tailed wormfish swimming alongside double-tailed duplicates. Lena is in a canoe on a swamp located quite near to a corpse that bears the same tattoo as Lena]
Lena: Oww. Ow.
[She clutches her arm - there is no tattoo yet. However, a dark blue mark has appeared at the same place on her arm]
Cass Sheppard: You're hurt?
Lena: It's just a bruise. I must have gotten that from the gator.
Lomax: Can you describe its form?
Lena: No.
Lomax: Was it carbon based?
Lena: I don't know.
Lomax: What did it want?
Lena: I don't think it wanted anything.
Lomax: But it attacked you.
Lena: It mirrored me. I attacked it. I'm not even sure if it knew I was there.
Desire - What are your desires? What drives you as an individual? What is your purpose?
Josie Radek: [to Lena, about the Shimmer] Ventress wants to face it. You want to fight it. But I don't think I want either of those things.
Disconnection – Alienation - The humans are alienated and thus become aliens on their own planet. Alienation is the loss of friendship or affection. The state of being alienated, withdrawn, or isolated from the objective world, as through indifference or disaffection. Psychiatry: a state in which a person's feelings are inhibited so that eventually both the self and the external world seem unreal. They are disconnected in The Shimmer; their coms don’t work and thus, cannot communicate to the outside world. But they were already metaphorically disconnected, in The Shimmer – they became literally disconnected.
Cancer – Dr Ventress is dying of cancer. The mutations act like a cancer on the environment, the ecosystems, the lighthouse… Sheppard’s daughter died of leukemia.
Corruption - How easily are we corrupted? Our bodies, emotions, mental states… Thorensen was an addict, Ventress has cancer.
Concealment - Ventress and Lena both conceal their true reasons for entering The Shimmer. The Shimmer conceals itself – what’s behind its shimmery walls?
Fragility – love is fragile, our metal states can be fragile, relationships, life, our ecosystems…
Mutation- Cell mutation. Mutation of the self. We are all mutations. Malignant… like tumours.
CONCEPTS OF ANNIHILATION
Space
Spiritual Space: connecting with everything; Where do I end and my environment begin?. Josie, who never seemed comfortable in her own skin (self-harming), joins herself with the environment and becomes part of it – like one of the human trees.
Physical Space: Environmental impact on us?
Head Space: What is the space between sanity and insanity?
Emotional Space
Time
The Perception of Time
Lomax: What did you eat? You had rations for only two weeks. You were there for nearly four months.
Lena: I don't remember eating.
Lomax: How long do you think you were in there?
Lena: Days. Maybe weeks?
Present Time: Who am I? / What am I?
Lena: You aren't Kane... are you?
Kane: I don't think so.
[pause]
Kane: Are you Lena?
Kane: I thought I was a man. I had a life. People called me Kane. And now I'm not so sure. If I wasn't Kane, what was I? Was I you? Were you me?
Present/Future Time: Aging -
Kane: I was just looking at the moon. It's always so weird seeing it like that in the daylight.
Lena: Like God made a mistake. Left the hall lights on.
Kane: God doesn't make mistakes. That's... somewhat key to the whole "being a god" thing.
Lena: Pretty sure he does.
Kane: You know he's listening right now, don't you?
Lena: You take a cell, circumvent the Hayflick limit, you can prevent senescence.
Kane: I was about to make the exact same point.
Lena: It means the cell doesn't grow old, it becomes immortal. Keeps dividing, doesn't die. They say aging is a natural process, but it's actually a fault in our genes.
Past Time: Memories – The only scenes we see Lena happy, is the one of her memory of Kane when they are talking and playing around on their bed. She talks about cell decay, which is a fault, and it leads to our death. She talks about being saved by her celestial friend while she longs for Kane’s return.
TIME & SPACE: Annihilation
MOTIFS & SYMBOLS OF ANNIHILATION
Water
We see Lena and Kane connect through a glass of water at the kitchen table. Kane drinks the water, which then has his blood in it. The shimmer looks like oil and water. The first encounter with an animal in the shimmer is in water. The alien landed in a lighthouse next to a sea, the glass of water at the end of the film has cell division in it, when in the canoe on water Lena learn of the loneliness and depression of the other women, this is when her bruise will start turning into a tattoo. Ventress gives Lena a bottle of water when they first meet – saying the drugs have a hangover like effect, when she awakes in the shimmer disorientated it’s raining, we see the unique/mutated aquatic life in the water, the see the shimmer colour reflected in the water, the man, when he is cut open, is standing in water, his dead body becomes crystalised or looks like coral. Reflections in the water (like duplicates, echoes, duality, division and divided selves). Lena's tattoo is a symbol of reflection. She refers to it as an echo.
Light
Lightwaves are refracted. The Shimmer is a prism; the light goes in, the speed of light slows down, the light is refracted. The Shimmer starts at a lighthouse. Kane commits suicide (or kills part of himself) with a phosphorous grenade “Have you ever seen a phosphorous grenade go off? Kinda bright.” When they meet the alien down the rabbit hole (like Alice) it’s light, moving through the space, then it transforms into a ball of moving light. The shimmer, which is a prism, makes everyone question their identity and deal with themselves (Kane kills part of himself, as does Lena; Dr Ventress and Josie are assimilated or become spiritually connected to The Shimmer; whereas Sheppard [completely lost] and Thorensen [lost to addiction] are digested by The Shimmer)
Metamorphosis
The Shimmer is not only like a prism, but it is a cocoon. People walked in, went through a process of change, then walked out something different.
Combine light and water = Rainbow
The Duality of Opposites
* Creation and Destruction * Beauty and Repulsion * Light and Dark * Ying and Yang * Female and Male * Known and Unknown * Connection and Disconnection * Love and Alienation
Duality
Both Lena and Dr Ventress are similar. They both desire to know what’s on the inside (Lena – biology, whereas Dr Ventress – the mind) of The Shimmer. They are both depressed. Kane kills part of himself, as does Lena; Dr Ventress and Josie are assimilated or become spiritually connected to The Shimmer; whereas Sheppard [completely lost] and Thorensen [lost to addiction] are digested by The Shimmer). Lena shares a tattoo.
By Scott Barnard