At long last, Paramount Pictures has released the first trailer forAnnihilation, the highly anticipated follow-up fromEx Machinawriter/directorAlex Garland. Based onJeff VanderMeer’s terrifying eco-horror novel of the same name, the film starsNatalie Portmanand follows the expedition of four women who are sent into the mysterious “Area X”, a portion of land in the United States that has been secretly quarantined due to abnormal activity. They are the twelfth expedition sent into Area X on behalf of the mysterious Southern Reach organization. The second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as the members turned on one another, and the eleventh expedition returned as shells of their former selves, all dying of cancer shortly after coming back.
Even if I wasn’t already a fan of VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, it’s impossible to look at this trailer andnotbe impressed. This thing looks exactly how the book feels: unsettling, disturbing, alluring, beautiful, haunting. The visuals that Garland has struck here are phenomenal, which is no easy task given the density of VanderMeer’s writing. This trailer strikes the absolute perfect tone and I truly cannot wait to inject this thing directly into my eyeballs.
Watch the firstAnnihilationmovie trailer below. The film also starsJennifer Jason Leigh,Tessa Thompson,Gina Rodriguez,Tuva Novotny, andOscar Isaac.Annihilationopens in theaters on August 11, 2025.
