Annihilation's Mysterious Shimmer Is Explained In New Featurette

The Shimmer is ready to devour everything in the latest featurette for Natalie Portman's upcoming sci-fi thriller Annihilation. The movie features the Black Swan star as a biologist who joins a mission to explore an environmental disaster zone after her husband (Oscar Isaac) disappears.

The featurette helps to explain this mysterious land, called the Shimmer. "The Shimmer is a sort of phenomenon," Portman explains in the video. "They don't know what's happened to all of the people who have gone in and haven't come back." Adds her co-star Jennifer Jason Leigh, "It is moving so quickly and soon it is just going to be devouring cities and things. They just don't have any idea what it is." 

Joining Portman's biologist on her mission are a psychologist (Leigh), an anthropologist (Gina Rodriguez), a linguist (Tuva Novotny), and a surveyor (Tessa Thompson). As the group soon discovers, the soldiers who were on the last expedition "went crazy, or something in here killed them." Teases Rodriguez at the end of the featurette, "I definitely think Annihilation is something we haven't seen quite yet." 

Annihilation is written and directed by Alex Garland based on the 2014 novel of the same name from Jeff VanderMeer. The movie hits theaters on Feb. 23.