Vivarium Blu-ray Review
Finding their forever home.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, May 15, 2020
Note: Certain aspects of
Vivarium's plot which most likely constitute spoilers are discussed in the following summary.
Vivarium (the word, not the movie) stems from Latin, and refers to a typically enclosed environment housing living things which are
being studied for research or similar activities. For relatively younger viewers, that may bring to mind an episode from
The Simpsons' annual "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween bashes where Lisa
(inadvertently) creates life in a little tub and watches it evolve. Relatively
older viewers, on the other hand, may instantly recall one of
the
better remembered episodes from
The Twilight
Zone:
Season 5, a creepy outing entitled "Stopover in a Quiet Town", wherein a married couple who had been reveling at a party the night
before wake up in a strange house in a strange deserted village where everything seems to be fake, with the revelation being that (spoiler alert, in
case that wasn't clear) they'd been abducted by an alien to serve as "pets" for his child, and who had therefore been placed in a model village that
might
indeed qualify as being a vivarium.
Vivarium (the movie, not the term) attempts to traffic in something quite similar to this basic
concept, and while it develops a rather potently angsty ambience a lot of the time, it may strike those who have seen either of the foregoing
properties, or any number of similar outings (like the bizarre 3D effort
The Bubble 3D, which I also compared to "Stopover in a Quiet Town" in my now long ago
The Bubble 3D Blu-ray review), as being at least a bit derivative and perhaps at
times underdeveloped.
The film begins with some moderately disturbing images of a baby cuckoo pushing eggs and non-cuckoo chicks out of a nest, so that it can enjoy
the
food the nest making mother is bringing. Evidently cuckoos adopt a kind of forced symbiotic relationship with other bird species, with a mother
cuckoo laying her eggs in a pre-existing nest built by another kind of bird. After hatching, the cuckoo chick "removes" any "competition", and is
able
to mimic the sounds of the "true" nest chicks, and therefore "fools" the nest mother into feeding it. It's just kind of bizarre (as it was no doubt
meant
to be), but it's obviously there for a reason, even if scenarist Garret Shanley and director Lorcan Finnegan are arguably more forthcoming about its
meaning in a supplement offered on this disc than they actually are within the context of the film itself.
There's a perhaps fitful attempt to blend the opening quasi-documentary footage with the actual narrative, when elementary school teacher
Gemma
(Imogen Poots) first encourages her charges to pretend they're trees, and then after school is out, finds a saddened little girl standing
under
a tree where a dead baby chick is lying in the grass, having been pushed out of its nest far above in one of the branches. Gemma makes some
passing comments about cuckoos (as if their predatory ways are general knowledge, which I for one don't think they are), after which it's revealed
that her partner Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) is an arborist working on that tree. That's about it for overt connections between the whole "cuckoo thing"
and the "real" story, although there is subtext galore still on the horizon.
WIthout much (or indeed
any) explanation, the two then arrive at the offices of a housing complex called Yonder, where they're greeted
by a patently odd salesman named Martin (Jonathan Aris). Martin encourages the couple to come with him to actually check out Yonder, which is
both "close enough" and "far enough", but which requires a drive to get there. Gemma and Tom perhaps reluctantly agree, and they set off in their
car following Martin, arriving at a surreal development that stretches on forever with what are typically called "cookie cutter" homes that all look
exactly the same. Martin shows them into house "Number 9", and then more or less promptly disappears. Gemma and Tom, while a little
perturbed and maybe just a
bit freaked out, attempt to drive out of Yonder, finding themselves unable to discover an egress, and in fact
continually ending up back right in front of Number 9 no matter which way they go.
The next part of the film details a number of escape attempts that Gemma and Tom make, all unsuccessful (of course), until Tom finally snaps and
decides to burn down the house. In another unexplained "twist", the two awaken to find their house magically rebuilt and a baby in a box (no joke)
nearby, a box with a message inscribed "raise the child and be released". The two obviously have no choice, and in the perhaps "good news"
department, the boy (Senan Jennings for the bulk of the story) grows
very quickly (kind of like a cuckoo, evidently), mimicking his
surrogate parents with alarming accuracy.
The film continues to document the psychological unraveling of both Tom and Gemma, separately and together, as the boy continues to "watch"
them (in Gemma's words). Without overly detailing the rest of the film, the story repeatedly offers the couple's fitful acts of defiance which
ultimately surrender to the stifling reality. Suffice it to say that there's a rather nihilistic denouement, one mixed with a
completely hallucinogenic sequence where Gemma attempts to follow a now grown up "boy" (Eanna Hardwicke) and ends up "visiting" a number of
other homes in the neighborhood, with one memorable sequence kind of aping the trope of the "sunken place" that was so visceral in
Get Out. The grown up "boy" ends up returning the story to
more or less where it began, though there's really no underlying explanation for
why that's happening, or if Gemma's little visits toward
the end of the film indicate there are a whole
bunch of similar loops going on, which in turn begs a whole host of new questions. I
couldn't help but think if this is an invasion of alien overlords, they're certainly going about it in a strange way.
Vivarium obviously wants to be a trippy mind bender, and actually succeeds in weaving a disorienting spell, but the best films in that
regard tend to be ones that at least have some semblance
of logic, however evanescent that aspect may be at times.
Vivarium just kind of plops plot points down and requires the viewer to accept
them, with the result being that those unwilling to just accept the film's formulations may have any number of questions (I have a veritable list).
Even Grade Z efforts like
The Bubble sought to explain the underlying mechanics of what the film depicted, but
Vivarium chooses to just present a
cinematic Boolean loop, perhaps waiting to see if the audience will traverse it more than once.
Vivarium Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
This review is being written during the Coronavirus epidemic, when many people are stuck pretty much 24/7 in their homes even without the
"encouragement" of any alien overlords. In that regard, and perhaps ironically, my wife and I have discovered that we can only handle so much news
before we overdose, and we've therefore been watching quite a bit of HGTV, a network that often features young couples trying to find their "forever
home". One of my realtor friends here in Portland in fact just was on a just slightly pre-Covid (in terms of its impact in the United States, anyway)
episode of
House Hunters, one of HGTV's more enduring franchises, and I joked with him in an email that I was going to be indulging in a
drinking game when I watched his episode, taking a slug every time someone said "bright and airy", "price point", and/or "I can see myself here [insert
proper activity]". My friend, who has about as un-PC a sense of humor as I do (birds of a feather and all, cuckoos notwithstanding) emailed me back
that the "[proper activity]" would be "I can see myself here
quarantined." There's a different kind of quarantine at the heart of
Vivarium, and the film might have had more resonance had the reasons behind that sequestration been made clearer. The film definitely has an
anxiety inducing claustrophobic ambience, and performances are quite engrossing as well, but this may be one housing development that could have
used a more penetrating "inspection". Technical merits are solid for those considering a purchase.
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