Alex Garland Directed Films Ranked
2. Annihilation (2018)
Outside the central premise, Alex Garland’s version of Annihilation is quite different to Jeff Vandemeer’s tone poem of a sci-fi novel. This might be explained by Garland’s decision to not re-read the book before adapting his screenplay, choosing instead to base it on “a dream of the book” and thus give his film a fever dream quality.
Biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) joins an all-female research mission into an area of wilderness shrouded by an extra-terrestrial “shimmer” that causes each member of the party to change inside and out, to lose their grip on reality and be haunted by the traumas they have repressed.
Everything in this queasily colourful world is refracted to one degree or another, and this becomes a motif as the film progresses. Characters are often separated by a kind of barrier that creates distance in their relationships and forces us to question our (and the characters’) perception of what is really going on. Then there’s the physical manifestation of the shimmer’s evolutionary refraction – nightmare predators stalking the land, plants that were not always plants, and a landscape that seems desperate to keep you within it for all time.
Garland perhaps offers more answers than the novel did – if you’re paying enough attention that is – but still leaves his audience plenty to decode and debate long after the credits roll. The final set piece with Portman’s Lena interacting with a shiny doppelganger will never leave you, and makes the whole story that preceded it even more disturbing and strangely beautiful after the fact.
1. Ex Machina (2014)
Alex Garland’s best work by some distance explores humanity’s relationship with technology, hubris and control, or the lack of it. These themes are explored in his screenplays for 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and ‘Devs’, but coalesce most strongly here in his feature directorial debut.
Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a low-level employee at a billion-dollar tech firm unexpectedly wins a competition to help the company’s reclusive founder Nathan (Oscar Isaac) test his newly created artificial intelligence named Ava (Alicia Vikander) at his home.
Ex Machina is a film primarily about observation, control and power dynamics; about how the acquisition of crucial information can shift the balance in favour of one over another. Caleb, Nathan and Ava are always watching and trying to figure each other out, and the same is expected of Garland’s audience. Watch closely and you can see the signs, when the balance of power shifts and who is playing with who and why, right up until the shocks of the final act.
Ava is a remarkable creation, brought to life with Vikander’s uncannily controlled performance, subtle VFX and weird chemistry with two men who haven’t realised how far ahead of them she is yet. Such a contained three-handed chamber piece as this film might not appeal to some at first, but the precision in the build of tension, pitch-perfect character work and showing rather than telling really draw you in.
It’s hard to keep doing genuinely new things in sci-fi filmmaking but Ex Machina is proof that if revolution is to be had then it is in the indie sector, where the ideas have to stand apart to transcend budgetary limitations, the debates they provoke becoming more prescient every day with the richest people on the planet relying on A.I ever more for their misguided purposes.
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Are you hoping Alex Garland change his mind and carries on directing? Are you looking forward to seeing what he writes for other filmmakers? What’s your favourite of Garland’s quartet of films? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to follow @thefilmagazine on Facebook and X (Twitter) for more insightful movie lists.
