The most disturbing part of “Annihilation,” apart from the human-mimicking mutant bear, is the shimmering doppelgänger that Lena encounters inside the lighthouse. The cloud that Ventress dissolves into assimilates a drop of Lena’s blood, her DNA, and gradually transforms into a mirrored version of herself, mimicking the person it is meant to copy. The escalating, anxiety-inducing soundtrack injects something deeply alienating into the sequence, where the real Lena watches her doppelgänger in awe and horror, where every movement is replicated in a twisted dance that eclipses verbal communication. It is hard to pinpoint whether this copy has any intentions of its own, let alone whether they are harmless or malevolent, but its almost childlike curiosity to mimic and adapt is fundamentally chill-inducing.

Although Lena tricks her mirrored copy into self-destruction and escapes the burning lighthouse (which collapses the Shimmer from the inside out), she is irrevocably changed due to her contact with something so alien. Towards the end, she is aware that Kane is not Kane, but she is also not the same woman who stepped inside the zone, as the Shimmer has completely reshaped her relationship with her husband and her own human shortcomings that are accompanied by tendencies to self-destruct. This is another step in mankind’s genetic evolution, only the effects are unmappable, just like the Shimmer, which defies traditional concepts of space-time and the “natural” order of things.

The film ends with the bleak acceptance of this altered reality, and this sentiment also graces VanderMeer’s final novel in the trilogy, titled “Acceptance,” where a character travels through a portal and leaps into the mysterious light at the bottom of a tower after learning about the twisted origins of Area X.