via Netflix
Five years doesn’t sound like a long time, but it’s an eternity in the world of streaming and one of the many reasons Alex Garland is losing his mind destruction is a movie you’ll never hear anyone talk about again.
The visionary novelist, screenwriter, and ultimately director — who saw his feature-length debut behind the camera win an Oscar and become an instant classic — presented a vision so unique and one-of-a-kind that it confounded Paramount executives, who eventually struck a deal with Netflix to distribute the film internationally to offset potential losses.
destruction sounds simple, as Natalie Portman leads a star-studded cast – including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, Oscar Isaac and Benedict Wong – on an expedition to uncover what happened to her husband in the mysterious Area X, although the execution was anything but.
The film proved to be just as polarizing as everyone expected, with the psychedelic and hallucinatory mix of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and existential fuck that divided opinions midway through. Based on the rules of the algorithm, it is very difficult to accidentally come across it destruction unless you’re actively looking for it, but its reputation as a deeply disturbing psychological nightmare lingers nonetheless.
Thanks to a Reddit thread, viewers keep traumatizing themselves by reliving the ups, downs, nightmares, and emotional scars left by the harrowingly unique trip to the other side, even if it’s just about it is harder for new fans to uncover something buried so deep in the niches of the Netflix library.
