Vesper continues a line of science-fiction films that began in the 1990s when biotechnology entered the popular imagination. Robots and spaceships took the backseat during that moment, which imagined a future dominated by good and evil genetic engineers and modifications. But this future was abandoned because, in a way, biotech never became as horrifying and controversial as first imagined. It did not change the structure of capitalist society in any radical way. And so we returned to the stars (Interstellar). But like Alex Garland's Annihilation, Vesper returns sci-fi cinema to the body, to the mud, to the monsters of life.