Logo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.

Welcome to Soggy Waffles Reviews. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the review. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online. And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:

1. The Frozen Waffle

The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. The whole experience is so traumatizing that it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.

2. The Soggy Waffle

You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.

3. The Microwaved Waffle

This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.

4. The Crispy Waffle

Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This rating is reserved for the movise that crack into your End-of-Year best lists but don't quite make it onto your Best of All Time.

5. The Perfectly Toasted Waffle

This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious (but obviously you still do). You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.

Annihilation

Enter the Shimmer

Stay on the edge of your seat

And keep your brain on.

“Annihilation” reminded me a lot of last year’s “mother!” and one of my favorite movies of all time, “Donnie Darko.” In both those films, there’s a lot to unpack. Taken at face value, the storylines are easy to follow, and if you only care for the surface-level thrills those films offer, you’ll have a satisfying movie-watching experience. But if you really try to unpack what’s happening before your eyes, and you let them sit with you, and you ponder them and re-watch them and Google them to see other people’s takes on them, then they can have a profound impact on you. With a movie like “Annihilation,” half the fun of the movie-going experience takes place after the credits roll, when you spend the ride home debating what it was all about with your friends and sift through all the theories online. Without giving much away, “Annihilation” delivers on both the surface-level thrills and the deeper meaning parables. A heady science fiction thriller’s ending is make-or-break, and while Annihilation’s is even weirder than I imagined, it’s thoroughly satisfying. Though I did leave the theater with my brain scrambled and my jaw on the floor.

The real travesty is that “Annihilation” didn’t last three weeks in the theaters near me, and it’s definitely the type of a movie that benefits from being screened for an audience. I really did stay on the edge of my seat throughout the entire two-hour runtime, and while I’m bummed that more people won’t get to have that experience, I’m sure I’ll find solace knowing they’ll be able to stream “Annihilation” from the edge of their couches.

In Theaters, CrispyGuest UserMarch 18, 2018