Annihilation

Alex Garland adapting a novel he read once and deliberately did not re-read, which is why it diverges wildly from the book and why it works as a film.

A zone called the Shimmer is expanding from a lighthouse on the Florida coast. Inside it, DNA refracts: plants grow in human shapes, an alligator has shark teeth, and a bear screams with the voice of the woman it killed. That bear sequence is the most frightening thing in a mainstream film this decade.

The last twenty minutes are the closest cinema has come to actual cosmic horror. There is no villain, no message, no negotiation. Something is copying, without intent, and the score by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow turns into a physical assault.

Paramount lost confidence and dumped it to Netflix outside North America, which is why almost nobody saw it on a screen where the lighthouse sequence would have worked properly.