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'Annihilation' trailer discovers mutated monsters in Area X

Natalie Portman plays a biologist on an expedition to the mysterious area that almost killed her husband.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read

Ready to face "Annihilation"? 

A trailer for Natalie Portman's upcoming sci-fi/horror movie was released Wednesday, and gives a little more backstory into her character's relationship with her husband (Oscar Isaac). In "Annihilation," based on Jeff VanderMeer's 2014 best-selling novel, Portman's character heads into Area X, which has been cut off from civilization for decades. 

Isaac's character returned from an earlier trek but is hospitalized and possibly in a coma. Portman's character (just called "the biologist" in the novel) is part of a four-woman expedition who try and uncover for themselves the secret of the mysterious place.

A teaser trailer for the film came out in September, but the trailer reveals more of the terrors waiting for Portman and crew, including what seem to be creepily crossbred animals, such as a shark-crocodile mix.

"Annihilation" comes out Feb. 23 in the US, and according to Deadline, will stream internationally on Netflix just 17 days later, reportedly because it was considered "challenging" to market overseas.

Director Alex Garland offered mixed feelings about the Netflix deal to Entertainment Weekly

"(The film) was made with the intention of seeing it in a cinema, and so it was kind of dismaying, and disappointing, that it wasn't felt that that was the right way forward.," he said. "But you know, it is what it is. There's pluses to it. Netflix reaches a lot of people. You don't have the grief of that terrifying opening weekend, and people talking about box office, or whatever."

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