Shimmering in the Swamp: Wetlands, Danger, and Ecological Refractions inAnnihilation

Abstract

Swamps have long been a fruitful setting for horror films. In Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Frogs (1972), and The Bay (2012), swamps birth monsters, from giant snakes to microscopic flesh-eating parasites. In part, the swamp as fertile horror setting is a product of the complicated and shifting views North American settlers have held towards wetlands, whether as obstacle and diseased, biodiverse and ecologically productive, and in need of both destruction and conservation. These layered divergent views have refigured wetlands as contradictory spaces where the monstrous can hide. In this article, I explore the 2018 science-fiction horror film Annihilation, Alex Garland’s adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel of the same name, to demonstrate how the film deploys the wetland setting as a fluid space which fosters posthumanist entanglements. I focus solely on the film adaptation as opposed to the novel both because I want to situate the film...

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