It is Not Easy to Move On: Liminal space as a transformative agent in Alex Garland's Annihilation

Abstract

This article examines how the environment can be used to convey poetic and discursive meaning, being capable of discussing the theme of transformation as an experience of death. To this end, it analyzes Alex Garland's film Annihilation (2018) based on a commentary on the author's use of derelict space to create what Sarah Al Shrbaji calls liminal space (2020), which turns these zones outside of normality into agents of transformation for the individuals who enter them. This is done through the lenses of science fiction and body horror, using the estrangement concerning the environment and oneself to draw parallels between ruination and degeneration. These relationships serve as tensions between the self and the other, internality and externality, and finally alterity and transformation. To consolidate this hypothesis, parallels are also drawn with other works that share themes and influenced the production of this film, in addition to the perspectives proposed in Death and Otherness (2020) by Byung-Chul Han, as well as the uses of space as poetics by Gaston Bachelard (1993)