Annihilation (I) (2018)

Jennifer Jason Leigh: Dr. Ventress

Photos 

Quotes 

• Lena : Why did my husband volunteer for a suicide mission?

  Dr Ventress : Is that what you think we're doing? Committing suicide?

  Lena : You must have profiled him. You must have assessed him. He must have said something.

  Dr Ventress : So you're asking me as a psychologist?

  Lena : Yeah.

  Dr Ventress : Then, as a psychologist, I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide, and almost all of us self-destruct. In some way, in some part of our lives. We drink, or we smoke, we destabilize the good job... and a happy marriage. But these aren't decisions, they're... they're impulses. In fact, you're probably better equipped to explain this than I am.

  Lena : What does that mean?

  Dr Ventress : You're a biologist. Isn't the self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?

• Dr Ventress : [from trailer]  It's destroying everything.

  Lena : It's not destroying. It's making something new.

• Dr Ventress : It's not like us... it's unlike us. I don't know what it wants, or if it wants, but it'll grow until it encompasses everything. Our bodies and our minds will be fragmented into their smallest parts until not one part remains... Annihilation.

• Lena : [as she examines multi-coloured flowers]  These are very strange.

  Dr Ventress : Why?

  Lena : Well, they're all so different. To look at them you wouldn't say that they are the same species... but they're growing from the same branch structure... so it *has* to be the same species. It's the same plant! It's like they're stuck in a continuous mutation.

  Dr Ventress : A pathology?

  Lena : Well... you'd sure as hell call it a pathology if you saw this in a human.

• [the team kill an alligator & examine it's mouth] 

  Lena : Lena: Whoa. It's exactly the same as the flowers. Look at the teeth. Concentric rows. Something here is making giant waves in the gene pool.

  [the paramedic, Anya, holds the alligator's mouth open. She has no tattoo on her arm] 

  Cass Sheppard : Sharks have teeth like that, don't they?

  Dr Ventress : Do you think it's a crossbreed?

  Lena : You can't crossbreed between different species.

  Anya Thorensen : Lena, this is getting heavy.

  [Later in the movie, Anya has acquired the tattoo] 

• Josie Radek : At first I thought the radio waves were blocked by the shimmer and that's why no one inside could communicate with base or GPS but the light waves aren't blocked, they're refracted and...

  Josie Radek : [takes her walkie talkie out of her bag and turns it on]  It's the same with the radios. Signals aren't gone, they're scrambled. That leaf in your hand, do you know what you'd get if you sequenced it?

  Lena : What?

  Josie Radek : Human Hox genes.

  Anya Thorensen : Hox? What does "Hox" mean?

  Lena : They're the genes that define the body plan, the physical structure.

  Josie Radek : And the plants have human body plan. Arms attached to shoulders, legs to hips.

  Lena : It's literally not possible.

  Josie Radek : It's literally what's happening. The Shimmer is a prism, but it refracts everything. Not just light and radio waves... animal DNA, plant DNA, all DNA.

  Anya Thorensen : What you mean "all DNA"?

  Dr Ventress : She's talking about our DNA. She's talking about us.

• Dr Ventress : It's the last phase. Vanished into havoc. Unfathomable mind. Now beacon, now sea.

  Lena : Dr. Ventress?

  Dr Ventress : Lena? We spoke, what was it we said? That I needed to know what was inside the lighthouse. That moment's passed. It's inside me now.

  Lena : What's inside you?

  Dr Ventress : [Whispered]  It's not like us, it's unlike us.

  [Normal volume] 

  Dr Ventress : I don't know what it wants, or if it wants, but it will grow until it encompasses everything. Our bodies and our minds will be fragmented into their smallest parts, until not one part remains... Annihilation.

• Dr Ventress : We have many theories, few facts.