When I heard Jeff Vandermeer’s novel Annihilation was being made into a movie, my reaction was, “No way! Impossible!”

I’d listened to the audio editions of all three books in the Southern Reach trilogy, and there was so much that was internal, philosophical, reflective, that I couldn’t see how a movie could be made out of it.

I think I was right.

I finally had a chance to see the film last night and I thought it was good. I liked the setting, the script, and the women characters on the expedition who were portrayed as realistic individuals and not just victims-in-waiting as women so often are.

I think the film succeeded because it wasn’t trying too hard to replicate the book. I would describe it as being based on elements of the book, rather than on the book as a whole. And that’s fine. Books and movies are different mediums, they tell stories in different ways, and so they can’t always tell the same stories.

Annihilation-the-film succeeded in respecting the feeling and the environment of Annihilation-the-novel, while telling a much simpler story, and that’s probably the best an author can hope for.

Kudos to both Jeff Vandermeer and to director/screenwriter Alex Garland.

For anyone interested in screenwriting, the conversion of book to movie would make an interesting study.