There was something very Freudian in this film. There is something that stirred in me the hours after watching this film, a fear slipped its way in to my inner consciousness. I believe its the fear of Apocalypse, the idea that ones race isn’t immune from irradiation, we are not immortal. A deep dark human feeling that we are some what better or ‘different’ than anything that surrounds us in the world we live. The fact that we are not, we are all carbon based and our DNA is shared between any and all life on earth is scary. The Alien is us in the same notion, a creation of war, war between us the human race and planet earth, we are the creators of our own destruction.
Can the film be seen as a Freudian Slip?
I think so usually we coin the term to that of a slip of the tongue, but…I feel that the film has a dream like quality to it, the team who investigate a phenomenon (the shimmer) do not remember setting up camp or the three days after entering, this could be seen as a moment where the team become one with ‘mother nature’ they in actual fact are the aliens who have entered this anomaly. ‘Mother nature’ tries to make sense of these ‘aliens’, much like when cancer appears in the body, the body reacts and in turn causes growth, this is what happens within the film. The shimmer interacts to change their DNA making its own re appropriated versions of the team. This is what has happened to anything and everything that is in the shimmer anyway.
The Freudian Slip occurs when the scientist at the end of the film asks if the Alien is carbon based. Completely misunderstanding the shimmer. Hence misunderstanding human existence on planet earth.
I really simply feel that Annihilation discusses human’s desire to expand but really we should be looking inwards. The real destruction, the real enemy is ourselves.