"Annihilation" is 'very weird and very beautiful,' as co-star Oscar Issac puts it. Never has a movie made me feel the way "Annihilation" has. Seriously, why this movie wasn't given more publicity is a mystery to me.

Honestly, I came into this movie so I could see Princess Padme in a crossover film with Poe Dameron. I had no idea I would be so entranced by the grandeur of this film. Everything was brilliant, from the art direction, to the sound mixing, to the Alex Garland's directorial style.

Some have criticized the movie for being "too weird" or "not making sense." I would argue that as an alien movie, it should be given some latitude to be strange and have wacky, inexplicable conclusions.

It's not a stereotypical futuristic sci-fi shooter like Men In Black or Independence Day. It's much more byzantine in nature and poses the question of whether or not an "alien invasion" would look like what we think it would.

Like the film Arrival (where a female scientist also faces off with unknown phenomena), its possible humans don't have the proficiency to capture the scale or grid of the "alien-ness" of an alien. It's possible we've bastardized the concept of extraterrestrial life.

The movie meticulously weaves threads of biogenetic apocalypse, self-destruction, and nihilism together, and the result is stunning.

The film begins by showing a projectile striking a lighthouse thereby triggering a reverberating force-field around it in a convex, globe-shaped structure called "the Shimmer."

The projectile might have come from some galactic superweapon but it begs the question: What if this was just a random shard that broke off a meteorite and barreled into earth?

Is this movie about an eerie, inescapable truth that the universe is random and chaotic?

Is it a nihilistic view that the universe is governed by laws of natural selection and genetic drift, thus affirming Carl Sagan's quote that the universe is "neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent?"

Is it simply an extended metaphor for self-destruction and self-inflicted annihilation?

I think the movie raises all of these questions. However, it is evident that some cursory knowledge of particle physics and cell biology went into crafting this film.

The word "annihilation," having become synonymous with eradication, is also a scientific term for the spontaneous, aimless collision of particles to produce new particles.

This idea is imbued in a memorable line from the film's protagonist, Lena (Natalie Portman), "It's not destroying; it's making something new."