One of the most enduring images from Jeff VanderMeer's original Annihilation is a sunken tower with a set of spiral stairs leading down into the earth. That tower, and its eerie, unknowable inhabitants are nowhere to be found in Alex Garland's Annihilation, which should tell you how much interest this movie has in being a chapter and verse adaptation (read: none).

Which is fine! Garland has said in interviews that reading the novel felt like a dream, so he wanted…