What's the true meaning of the human circle of life, or what is usually expected of gender-based roles in a family? While we're trying to figure it out as we are living it, there are also others, who are watching us from a distance and wanting to learn about us as well.
Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots in Vivarium. (Photo © M Pictures Co.,Ltd)
In the new thriller/mystery film Vivarium, writer Garret Shanley and director Lorcan Finnegan bring this big concept and combines it with sci-fi and horror elements to give us a whole new level of weirdness and creepiness. Despite its slow pacing and open ending that may not appeal to everyone, it doesn't shy away from the fact that this is a bold film to make and definitely worth a try.
Vivarium stars Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots as Tom and Gemma, a couple who are looking to buy the perfect home to start a family of their own. Upon arrival at a real estate office, they meet a very strange agent who takes them to a remote suburban complex called Yonder in a mysterious neighbourhood of identical green coloured houses. But while touring the house, the couple suddenly realise that the agent has disappeared and they find themselves left alone in the empty complex. No matter how hard they try to leave, they go back to the same house they started in because the housing development is a labyrinth-like loop where there is no exit.
Soon a mysterious box shows up in front of their house. Inside, there's a newborn baby with a very simple manual that instructs Tom and Gemma to raise the child if they wish to ever get out of the place.
The movie feels almost like an extended Twilight Zone episode with nothing explained in the end. At one point it suggests that it could be about alien abduction, or just a plain supernatural-driven story. But obviously, the entire film is one large metaphor, especially from the hint we get in the first 30 seconds of the opening scene, which depicts the parasitic life cycle of cuckoos, who lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, eventually pushing the other hatching eggs out of the nest and is then tended to by the surrogate mother. The same goes to the meaningless lives of Tom and Gemma who are forced to raise the alien offspring, training them to pass for some semblance of human.
Vivarium is the third directorial effort from Finnegan who gave us the horror movie Without Name in 2016, and 2002's short film Foxes, which also follows the same concept of isolation and being trapped in suburbia. The set design of Vivarium is immaculate, especially the design of the Yonder complex where all of the houses are carbon copies, even the clouds in the sky look too beautiful to be true, appearing almost manufactured. The opposite colour palette of green-coloured houses and red sky on some of the scenes gives unsettling feelings.
The performances by Poots and Eisenberg are outstanding. They have great chemistry as a couple, and this makes the relationship not perfect but realistic.
It's not the first time these two have been paired on screen, having collaborated once before on last year's weird indie flick The Art Of Self-Defense. But in Vivarium, it's more like Poots who's taking the lead role here as one half of a couple who's trying all she can to keep their relationship from breaking and maintain their sanity. Not to mention how she's forced into parenting the demonic child, played by nine-year-old Senan Jennings who's successfully creepy as hell in this movie, with its inhuman sounding voice spouting out extremely disturbing dialogue. His performance in some of the scenes will definitely send chills down your spine.
One of a few flaws about Vivarium is the film kind of drags too long for an entire hour and 37 minutes runtime. Because from beginning until the end, the film is never quite clear about anything at all, whether the origin of Yonder and its creatures, or even the background on the couple themselves. It's like these two people are brought into this situation and make the audience feel cooped up, struggling with whatever they're struggling with. And when the film's over there isn't a lot of resolution in terms of everything you've watched. I feel something missing, as if they just didn't execute it well enough to fulfil this entire concept. It possibly could have worked better as a short film, or if they shortened and tightened up a few plot points, that probably would have worked better.
But despite that, Vivarium is an interesting conceptual film about the circle of life, and our roles and duties, no matter how unfair they are. The film illustrates in its own way how monotonous, meaningless regular life can be -- you grow up, you study, you work, you fall in love, you buy a house, you raise a family and then you're gone as your children go through this same sad and endless cycle again and again.
- Vivarium
- Starring Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Senan Jennings
- Directed by Lorcan Finnegan
