The first trailer for Alex Garland's Annihilation is here, and it looks gorgeous and strange.
Based on the book by Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation stars Natalie Portman as a scientist – a biologist in the book.
Portman's character, along with an anthropologist, a surveyor and a psychologist (all women) enter a place called Area X which is beset with strange creatures and vegetation.
The trailer gives as a look at some of the landscapes in Area X.
Though from the trailer the movie is going to look stunning, the book is actually very sinister as the group discover a strange sentient plant and unusual structures include a 'tower' and a lighthouse.
None of the women have names in the novel, though from the first image of Portman, her character in the movie will be called Lena.
"[Portman] finds a very strange, dream-like, surrealist landscape, and goes deeper and deeper into that world, and also into that mindset," Garland told EW.
Annihilation reteams Garland with his Ex Machina star Oscar Isaac as Portman's husband, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez and Thor: Ragnarok's Tessa Thompson as the other members of Portman's team.
Even though Annihilation is the first part of VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, Garland approached the movie as a standalone after Dredd didn't (yet) led to a trilogy.
"I'd rather work on a story that I felt was self-contained rather than one that sort of had a 'dot-dot-dot' at the end. I think that provokes a sort of instant, understandable, cynicism. We sense the money grab and I feel that pollutes the story," he explained.
"So, right from the get-go, I did not think of this as being part of a trilogy; I thought of it as being just a single, self-contained movie. If other people wanted to do that, that would be fine. That's none of my business. But from my point of view, it's just one."
Annihilation is released in cinemas on 23 February, 2018.
