← Twisted Tales with Heidi Wong
Twisted Tales with Heidi Wong
The Scientific Expedition That Ended in Madness (Annihilation Explained!)
00:28:07
Loading summary
Transcript16 lines
- [00:01]
Vanessa Richardson
On the Crime House Original podcast, Serial Killers and Murderous Minds, we're diving into the psychology of the world's most complex murder cases.
- [00:09]
Dr. Tristan Ingalls
From serial killers to cult leaders, deadly exes and spree killers, we're examining not just how they killed, but why.
- [00:17]
Vanessa Richardson
Is it uncontrollable rage? Overwhelming fear? Or is it something deeper? Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crime House Studios original new episodes drop every Monday and Thursday Friday. Follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:42]
Advertisement Voice
This is crime house.
- [00:49]
Heidi Wong
A vibrant wasteland full of horrific monstrosities. A place so terrifying it makes you question reality. It's a journey through space and time, but most importantly, the mind. When you watch Annihilation, you might think the scariest part is the bizarre creatures living within the shimmer. But when you dig deeper, you'll realize that the true horror is us. Welcome to Twisted A Crime House Original. I'm Heidi Wong. Every week I'll take you deep into the true stories behind horror's biggest legends. From vengeful ghosts to bloody slashers to alien encounters and more. These these real life accounts are guaranteed to keep you up at night. But scary stories aren't any fun if you're telling them alone. If you've had a haunted moment or twisted tale of your own, I want to hear about it. Drop it in the comments. The creepier the better. Crime House is made possible by you. Follow Twisted Tales and subscribe to Crime House on Apple Podcasts for ad free early access. Today we're heading deep into the shimmer to the heart of Alex Garland's 2018 sci fi horror film Annihilation. Taking influences from art history and psychology, the movie tries to make sense of our subconscious by sending us into a waking nightmare. So join me as we journey into the most twisted terror of all the human mind.
- [02:08]
Advertisement Voice
I have to admit that one of my style pet peeves, especially when layering, is when guys shirts bunch up under sweaters and it gets all wrinkled and bulky, it can look slightly haunted. That's why you have to check out Collars and company, the makers of the original dress collar Polo. These shirts are honestly a game changer. They're four way stretch buttery soft polos but with a firm dress shirt collar built in so you get that clean polished dress shirt look with the comfort of your favorite polo. You can wear them under a sweater, throw one on with a blazer, or wear it solo as an elevated polo seriously works for any occasion. They're perfect for the office, the golf course or a night out. And there's a reason this brand is exploding. They went viral on social media and even landed a $1 million shark tank investment from Mark Cuban and Peter Jones. Plus, the collars actually stay sharp all day. No flopping, no spreading. And it's not just polos. They've got great sweaters, quarter zips, pants and outerwear too. If you're looking for a performance dress shirt or polo that looks great all day, check out collars and co.com use promo code HEIDI for 20% off any purchase of $100 or more.
- [03:21]
Heidi Wong
If you've ever seen Annihilation, you may not know what to make of it. It's Based on Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series, and the movie sometimes feels more like a half remembered dream than a feature film. There's a lot of things at work here, both on the surface and lurking underneath. This is by design, beyond the source material. Director Alex Garland drew from a ton of inspirations to bring the story to life, from from Freudian psychology to existential art films to real life disasters in Annihilation. Each of these concepts float just out of focus, just like the exclusion zone they call the Shimmer. But they all have one thing in the human drive towards self destruction. From one of its very first scenes, Annihilation explores two forces at creation and destruction. A few minutes into the film, the main character, a biologist named Lena, portrayed by Natalie Portman, gives a lecture on cell division. A microscopic view of a petri dish fills the screen as cells split, reform and split again. Lena tells her class that these are the building blocks of life and death because these particular cells are cancerous. That tension between creation and destruction sticks with you as you follow Lena home from class and into the world of Annihilation. The plot centers around a mysterious zone on the Florida coast called the Shimmer. Three years earlier, a meteor crash landed on a lighthouse, setting off some kind of energy explosion. Ever since, the Shimmer has been spreading, overtaking beaches, swamps and even towns. No one inside the Shimmer seems to have survived, and of every team sent in to investigate, no one has returned. Except Lena's husband Kane, portrayed by Oscar Isaac, who, although he can't remember what happened while he was inside the Shimmer and shortly after returning home, he gets really sick. Hoping to find answers, Lena joins a team of female scientists on the latest expedition into the Shimmer. They discover plant fungus and animal DNA mutating in ways that should be deer with flowers on their antlers and also a bear that's pure nightmare fuel. Lena's convinced that the only way to make Sense of the place is to get to the heart of the lighthouse. Struck by the meteor inside, she's confronted by an alien creature who mimics her every movement and then takes on her appearance before attacking her. In the process of fighting it off, Lena blows up the lighthouse, setting off a chain reaction throughout the Shimmer and raising some deep existential questions. It's a lot to take in and I'll break it down piece by piece. Let's get into the inspirations behind Annihilation, starting at the beginning with a real life disaster. In 1957, the Mayak nuclear facility in the Soviet Union's Ural Mountains exploded, setting off a disaster of apocalyptic proportions. The blast sent a massive amount of radiation into the atmosphere, exposing more than 272,000 people in the immediate aftermath, with as many as 400,000 ultimately affected by the fallout. The soil, the water, even the air became toxic. Thousands of people died, some instantly, some not until many years later. You'd think an incident like this would be international news, but it was never reported, not even inside the Soviet Union, because this disaster happened in a place that didn't officially exist. Mayak was a top secret facility located in an obscure village. It's where the Soviet Union created their first nuclear bomb. And when the place blew up, they didn't want anyone to know about it. The Soviet government ended up evacuating about 20 villages. But of the quarter million people affected, they only evacuated 11,000 of them. None of the evacuees were told what happened. Some believed it was a disease outbreak. Others were told that a meteorite had hit nearby. To keep anyone from looking around, officials created an exclusion zone around Mayak. But there's only so much you can do to contain nuclear fallout. For years after, people who'd been living near Mayak died of cancer in huge numbers. And multiple generations of children have been born with birth defects. Secrecy still surrounds the site today. In fact, when the disaster was finally acknowledged in 1976, it was named after a nearby town, Kishtim. Since the village where it was located wasn't even on the map. Rumors of a meteorite hitting the earth, an invisible force changing and destroying DNA, and a secret government controlled zone where nobody can go. All of these details from the very real Kishtim disaster inspired the fictional story of Annihilation. But long before annihilation came out, or before the novel was ever written, the Kishtim disaster inspired another movie, one that was nearly banned before it ever came out. When asked if any other movies inspired Annihilation, Alex Garland always mentions a Soviet film from 1979 called Stalker. In Stalker, some kind of meteorite or nuclear disaster or alien technology created a wasteland called the Zone. The ominous and otherworldly Zone is heavily guarded, hiding a deep secret. The movie features a character only known as Stalker, whose job is to guide people within the Zone. And he has two clients, a drunken novelist he calls Writer and a scientist only known as Professor. Writer and professor are after one. At the heart of the Zone is a room that grants the deepest desires of anyone who reaches it. But Stalker warns them getting there won't be easy. The second they enter the Zone, the movie's coloring shifts from yellow and brown sepia to vivid blues and greens, like a dark twist on the wizard of Oz. The Zone is beautiful and haunting, a landscape full of tanks and falling down power lines that's slowly becoming reclaimed by nature. And much like the Shimmer, the world inside the Zone doesn't play by our rules. Moving forward sometimes means doubling back. The laws of time, space and physics don't apply. The line between dream and reality sometimes disappears. It's the perfect setting for director Andrei Tarkovsky's real journey, not through a mysterious Zone, but through the human psyche. Most of Stalker's runtime is dedicated to existential conversations between its three characters as they cross moss covered marshes, pick through abandoned industrial buildings, and venture through an amorphous anomaly they call the Meat Grinder, which, as its name implies, is not a place where good things happen. Most of what the characters talk about stems from the world of psychoanalysis and the grandfather of it all, Sigmund Freud. Early on in Stalker, one of the characters says, my conscience wants vegetarianism to win over the world, and my subconscious is yearning for a piece of juicy steak, but what do I want? It's a throwaway joke, but it's also a clever take on one of Freud's theories about the mind, which he said is made up of three the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. He described it like an at the very top, poking out of the water, is the conscious mind, which holds everything that we're aware of at any given moment. Thoughts, desires, memories and emotions. In the middle, just under the surface, is the preconscious. This holds all of the thoughts and memories that aren't currently in our awareness, but could easily be brought to consciousness. It's sort of like a barrier to keep us from getting overwhelmed by our thoughts, which brings us down to the largest part of the iceberg, deep below the the unconscious. It contains thoughts, emotions and Memories that make us who we are, but rarely come to the surface. Think repressed feelings, hidden desires, urges and habits. And the idea of these three parts of you not being on the same page is a major theme in Stalker. The movie's three main characters all have very different reasons for being there. Ryder hopes to get inspiration for his next work. Professor wants to document the Zone and win a Nobel Prize, while Stalker sees himself as a faithful man. And each journey into the Zone is like a holy pilgrimage. It sounds like an old joke. An artist, a scientist and a priest walk into a bar. But this punchline has an existential twist. As the three men get deeper into the Zone, they start to suspect that they'll get more than they bargained for. Because behind their conscious desire is an unconscious motive. And when they get to the room, it won't just give them what they ask for. It reads your mind, and then it decides for itself. When the Stalker tells the story of his mentor, a man nicknamed porcupine, the danger becomes clear. Porcupine sacrificed his brother's life to get into the room that grants wishes. When he got inside, he thought his desire was to bring his brother back to life. But when he left the room, he was richer than he ever imagined, and his brother was still dead. The room wasn't a genie who grants wishes. It was a mirror. And deep down, at the core of Porcupine's nature, he valued money more than his brother's life. With this story on their minds, both writer and professor struggle with whether they truly want to go into the room. They all have a conscious desire, but another wish lurks deeper down. The writer is depressed and may even be suicidal. The professor wants to win a Nobel Prize, but not for the sake of progress. For him, it's a way of getting back at another scientist his wife had an affair with. And with all three pieces combined, conscious, preconscious and unconscious, who knows what they really, truly want? Clearly, Stalker asked some very big questions, which Alex Garland was definitely inspired by. But when it came out in 1979, it didn't have a huge impact. And just like in Stalker, this one. From the water to the soil to the air people breathe, was one big trap.
- [13:26]
Advertisement Voice
You know that feeling when you start the year and decide it's time for a little wardrobe refresh? That's where I am right now. And Quint has made it so easy. I have one of their Mongolian cashmere sweaters, and it's so soft, easy to layer during the holidays and. And feels like a designer piece without the markup Quince really has all the staples covered. I've also been into their denim pieces. They're easy to dress up or down and their Italian wool coat is now my go to for chilly mornings. The quality really shows in the details, the stitching, the fit, the fabric. They're all thoughtfully designed to last for years, not just a season. And the best part? Everything is made from premium materials in ethical factories, but priced way below other luxury brands. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com twisted for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com twisted to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com twisted Eczema is unpredictable, but you.
- [14:34]
Heidi Wong
Can flare less with EBGLIS, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dosing phase, about in 10 people taking MGLIS achieved itch relief in clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks, and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.
- [14:50]
Advertisement Voice
MGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ, a 250mg per 2ml injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. Eglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebglis. Before starting Ebglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.
- [15:24]
Heidi Wong
Ask your doctor about ebgliss and visit ebgliss.lilly.com or call 1-800-LilyRx or 1-800-545-597. In the early hours of April 26, 1986, a team of nuclear scientists was running a safety test in Reactor four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which was a part of the Soviet Union at the time. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until suddenly something went very, very wrong. Multiple explosions rocked the power plant and a fire Broke out. The disaster released 400 times more radiation into the atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. At the time, no one was informed what was happening. Firefighters from the nearby town were sent over to put out what they thought was a normal fire. Some of them would die just three weeks later from radiation exposure. During those initial few hours, firefighters pumped thousands of gallons of water into the burning building. They heroically put the fire out, stopping the radioactive smoke that was wafting across Europe. But a few days later, officials realized the firefighter's solution had caused an even bigger problem. The basement of reactor four had become flooded with radioactive water. And tons of molten nuclear debris was melting through the floor above it. It was just a matter of time before it broke through and landed in the water below. If the superheated nuclear material touched the water, radioactive steam would build in pressure until it exploded, destroying the other three reactors at Chernobyl. The fallout cascading across the Soviet Union and Europe would be quadrupled. It could kill millions and make the land uninhabitable for hundreds of thousands of years. The only way to stop it was to drain the water. And the only way to do that was to manually open the valves at the bottom of the flooded basement. To save the world, someone would have to swim under a reactor that was currently melting down. The stakes of this mission were so high, even talking about it now sounds like the plot of a sci fi thriller movie. And the three men who did it, definitely heroes. On May 4, 1986, barely a week after the initial explosion, 27 year old mechanical engineer Alexei, 29 year old senior engineer Valeri and 46 year old shift supervisor Boris reentered the smoking reactor. They wore wetsuits, goggles and masks that covered every inch of their bodies. But they were under no illusions. Radiation wouldn't be stopped by rubber or fabric. They knew they were going on a suicide mission, but they were willing to do it anyway. Alexei Valeri and Boris waded into the water that filled the basement level of the reactor. Using a single flashlight beam to light their path, the divers made their way slowly but surely to the basement room, constantly checking their Geiger counter. To their surprise, the levels in the basement weren't actually that high. At least compared to the normal radiation they were exposed to working in the plant. But if they didn't drain the water, that would change very quickly. Normally, finding the right valves wouldn't be too hard. All three men knew the basement layout pretty well. But walking around a well lit power plant during your normal shift and and swimming through the same room when it's pitch black and filled with radioactive water are two very different things. The basement corridor was covered with different pipes with all kinds of valves, some for water or steam or any other number of things. But when the flashlight hit one particular pipe, the three men felt a wave of relief. It was the one they were looking for. They opened the valves, and the water started draining out of the basement. Crisis averted. Alexei, Valery and Boris had just stopped a nuclear apocalypse. But at the time, their bravery wasn't even acknowledged, at least not officially. This time, the disaster was just too big to cover up. But the true severity of it went underreported, and it's taken years for the full details of the cleanup to come out. Some estimates say that up to 125,000 people involved involved in the cleanup effort died by 2005. There's some contention around that, but one thing is what happened in Chernobyl was a tragedy. But to everyone's surprise, the three divers who drained the basement survived. Alexei later talked about what happened to him right after coming out of the water. The three men tried to decontaminate themselves, taking off their diving suits and washing themselves. But try as they might, they kept setting off radioactivity alarms. They each suffered side effects from radiation sickness, with Alexei having black burn marks that appeared on his legs. But all three men did survive, and miraculously, they thrived. Boris lived for another 19 years beyond the incident until 2005, when he passed away from a heart attack at the age of 65. As of this recording, Valeri is still alive at 68 years old, and Alexei is still lecturing about New York nuclear safety at 66. In 2019, all three were finally recognized for their contributions when they were awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. Thanks to their heroism, the damage was a lot less bad than it could have been. And it was still a massive disaster. To minimize the fallout from Chernobyl, the USSR created an exclusion zone, which the country of Ukraine still maintains today. The ground, trees, and even animals living there are still very radioactive. But that hasn't stopped people from going in first on unsanctioned explorations and more recently on official tours. You can't help but draw parallels between the mysterious zone of the mind in Stalker and the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. In fact, many locals have even noticed a connection. Some of the people who run these tours and guide people through through the zone have taken to calling themselves stalkers. From nuclear disasters to exploration of the psyche, you can see how the breadcrumbs led back to annihilation. In the case of the Chernobyl divers, it feels like we saw an ingredient that wasn't in Stalker a group of people with a shared goal driven not by selfish reasons but by duty. Between these influences, we can start to see the thematic framework for annihilation. But there's still one thing missing, and for that we have to go back to the therapist's couch to examine the drive towards self destruction.
- [21:58]
Vanessa Richardson
What drives a person to kill? Is it uncontrollable rage? Overwhelming fear? Unbearable jealousy? Or is it something deeper, something in the darkest corners of our psyche?
- [22:12]
Dr. Tristan Ingalls
Every Monday and Thursday, the Crime House Original Podcast Serial Killers and Murderous Minds dives deep into the minds of history's most chilling murderers. From infamous serial killers to ruthless cult leaders, deadly exes, and terrifying spree killers. I'm Dr. Tristan Ingalls, a licensed forensic psychologist. Along with Vanessa Richardson's immersive storytelling full of high stakes twists and turns, in every episode of Serial Killers and Murderous Minds, I'll be providing expert analysis of the people involved, not just how they killed, but why.
- [22:48]
Vanessa Richardson
Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crime House Studios original new episodes drop every Monday and Thursday. Follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [23:04]
Heidi Wong
The 1979 Soviet film Stalker has two main influences on its mind. The first is nuclear disaster. The second, Freud's theories on the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. Alex Garland drew a lot of influence from Stocker when he made Annihilation, which he mentioned in several interviews. But bringing Jeff VanderMeer's books to life meant looking a little closer to home for inspiration. When he wrote Annihilation, he wasn't thinking about nuclear disaster in far off Soviet Union. He was thinking about his own backyard, the northern coast of the Florida Panhandle, and a disaster that didn't spew radioactivity into the air, but pollution into the sea. On April 20, 2010, an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig. The rig sank, killing 11 people, and the well it was drilling at the time of the explosion kept pumping gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. For 87 days. Scientists worked to stop the bleeding. By the time the well was finally capped, 3.19 million barrels of oil had polluted the ocean. But even though the leak had stopped, the cleanup would take years. And it's still not entirely clear how badly the largest marine oil spill in history affected the environment. And while the oil from the Deepwater Horizon was spilling into the ocean, author Jeff Vandermeer was starting to think of A new book. He liked to go on hikes in Sea St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, which has a network of trails through the wetlands and along the coast leading to a 19th century lighthouse. Looking out at the Gulf of Mexico and imagining the oil floating on top of the seawater, he thought about what it would take to protect the wildlife reserve from that kind of damage. That was the seed of inspiration which grew his idea for Area X, which is the shimmer in the movie. It's a place within a barrier where the natural world can heal itself from human pollution with strange and fantastical results. When Alex Garland started adapting the book to the screen, he already had the film Stalker and its mysterious zone at the back of his mind. But focusing on Vandermeer's ecological disaster more than Tarkovsky's nuclear wasteland appealed to him. And as he began shaping the story, one of Freud's other theories came to the death drive. In 1920, Freud published a book called beyond the Pleasure Principle. It's where he introduced some of his most famous theories, especially the division of the personality into the id, ego and the superego. Freud theorized that the ID was our base desires, the part of us that seeks pleasure and wants it. Now meanwhile, the superego is a moral conscience which urges us to have our behaviors reflect the most moral version of ourselves. The ego is in the middle, seeking to balance the id's desires with the judgment of the the superego. That combination determines our personality. However, when Freud was researching patients for his book, he came up against behavior that didn't totally make sense. With this model. Think of a soldier who's deeply disturbed by what they've seen at war. No matter how they want to repress it, they can't help reliving those memories again through dreams or flashbacks. Today we know that response is often caused by extreme trauma. But back in 1920, people didn't really have an explanation for it. And having flashbacks to your worst moments didn't fit with Freud's theory that we're driven by pleasure. So Freud came up with another the life drive and the death drive. According to this theory, humans have two base impulses, life and death. On one side, we have a deep seated need to protect life or create it. Examples of the life drive include self preservation in a deadly encounter or having children. But we also have a drive towards ending things. It can be positive, like with our instincts to hunt or kill prey to survive. But it can also exhibit itself negatively in self destructive behaviors. This strange balance between life and death shows up in all the influences behind annihilation and within the scientists who chose to venture towards certain doom. Remember, almost no one has returned from the Shimmer. But these characters all have different reasons for going on this mission of self destruction. One is an addict, another is self harming. The leader is already dying of cancer. And Natalie Portman's character Lena is haunted by her infidelity to her husband, which is what drove him to go into the Shimmer first. In a late night talk, Lena and another character acknowledge that almost everyone participates in self destructive behavior. It's something they all share. And the movie's climax turns this psychological drive into something physical. When they finally reach the lighthouse, Lina goes in alone. Inside, she finds a crater in the ground seemingly made by a meteorite or alien technology. In a scene reminiscent of the meat grinder from Tarkovsky's film, she travels through a dark tunnel to find a glowing core. There she encounters a silvery being. As she tries to fight it, the being slowly takes on her shape. It mirrors Lena's movements, seemingly unable to disconnect itself from her her. Like the cells that grow and divide in the petri dish at the beginning of the film, it's an outgrowth of her, a doppelganger, a perfect double. And to finish her journey, she must kill it and finally destroy herself. In the very last minutes of the film, we see Lena re emerge into the world. She's interrogated by the shadowy organization that sent her into the Shimmer. They control what goes into it and what comes out. She passes their test and is allowed to reunite with her husband. But when they share a glance, we're left wondering who made it out of the lighthousel or her double? Which self did she destroy? Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of Twisted Tales, a Crime House original. I'd love to hear from you. What did you think about today's stories? Anything you're dying from me to COVID Leave a comment or review wherever you're tuning in. And be sure to follow Twisted Tales so we can keep building this community together. I'll be back next week with another unbelievable true story. Until then, stay curious and remember, there's no reason to fear the dark unless you try to hide from it.
- [29:18]
Vanessa Richardson
What drives a person to murder? Find out from a licensed forensic psychologist on serial killers and murderous minds. A Crime House Original podcast. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday. Follow wherever you get your podcasts.