A new trailer for Alex Garland’s Annihilation shows off the weirdness of Area X

Paramount Pictures has released a new trailer for Alex Garland’s upcoming science fiction-horror film Annihilation, showing off the strange world that an expedition finds when they enter a zone called Area X.

The film is based on the 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer, about a team of scientists that enters the region and discovers a surreal world where nature has taken over in strange ways. We’ve seen a bit of this weirdness in prior trailers and featurettes, but in this new trailer, we see the team trying to comprehend the world they’re walking through.

In this trailer, the team encounters strange creatures in the zone, and The Biologist (played by Natalie Portman’s) says that something is making “giant waves” in the gene pool. Whatever is going on in the zone, they discover that it’s also starting to infect and change them. What they can’t figure out is if it’s destroying the world as it expands — or if it’s making something new.

Annihilation opens on February 23rd.