“I knew that it was planned as a trilogy by the author, but there was only the manuscript for the first book. Garland, who’s credited as both director and screenwriter of the new film, has said before that he based his Annihilation on just the first book in the series: “At the point I started working on Annihilation, there was only one of the three books,” he told Creative Screenwriting.

VanderMeer’s 2014 novel was the first in a series of three books that would all be released that year, collectively called the Southern Reach Trilogy. We know more about the world outside Area X in the film.

Garland goes for a more tangible-looking interpretation, depicting the border as a massive iridescent wall that looks like the outside of a soap bubble, which the scientists even refer to as “the Shimmer.” One of the instantly iconic images from the movie is the shiny, translucent ooze hanging in the air that marks the barrier between civilization and Area X in the book, VanderMeer describes the border as invisible. The border between Area X and the outside world is invisible in the book.(Spoilers for both the book and the movie below). So how exactly did Garland make Annihilation into a movie? Where did he take liberties in interpretation, and where did he depart from the source material entirely? Here are a few key spots we’ve analyzed. The first-person narrator of the book is terse, vague, and somewhat unreliable coupled with VanderMeer’s minimal exposition and the main character’s repeated insinuations that some things are so otherworldly they can’t be described, the original story is a gripping, disorienting read - and a real challenge to adapt for the screen. The book and film versions of Annihilation, however, are equally “What the…?” in different ways. Finish Alex Garland’s Annihilationand you’ll find yourself sitting in a dark theater quietly murmuring, “What the…?” Finish Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, meanwhile - the science-fiction novel that serves as the source material for Garland’s film - and … well, you’ll also find yourself sitting someplace quietly murmuring, “What the…?”

Annihilation book