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'Annihilation' trailer knows the first rule of scary movies

What survives in an area that's been cut off from civilization for decades? Maybe we humans don't want to know.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
Video screenshot by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper/CNET
Watch this: 'Annihilation' teaser trailer released

The new teaser trailer for Natalie Portman's upcoming sci-fi/horror movie, "Annhilation," knows the first rule of scary flicks. The monster you don't see is always scarier than the one you do. 

"Annihilation" is based on Jeff VanderMeer's 2014 best-selling novel, the first in his Southern Reach trilogy. First we see Portman in a flashback on an expedition into Area X, which has been cut off from civilization for decades. We also see her in the present being interrogated about whatever horrors she and her (all-women, a nice twist) team saw there. 

Very little is revealed about the being they encountered ("Was it carbon-based?" "Did it communicate with you?" Portman's questioner asks), and that just makes the feeling of doom more palpable.

Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac also star, and Alex Garland ("Ex Machina," "The Beach," "28 Days Later") directs and wrote the screenplay.

"Annihilation" is set to come out on Feb. 23, 2018.

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