Vivarium

Vivarium is a rare form of cinematic storytelling that begins at a break-neck pace and never provides much, if any, time for viewers to catch their breath. It’s an endlessly weird and oddly charming examination of cohabitation set inside a mysterious world where nothing is as it seems except the fact that there is no escaping the mundanity of adulthood. 

Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are a typical couple in their early 30s with steady jobs and an aesthetically casual, yet emotionally serious longterm relationship. They’ve been searching for a place together for an unknown amount of time, but nothing seems to fit their hard-to-define dreams. They decide to take a chance on a tour led by a mysterious realtor to a newly-constructed suburban neighborhood where all the houses are identical. It’s the kind of photo-perfect suburbia that gives normal people the creeps, and it becomes exponentially creepier when the duo realizes they cannot escape.

It only takes 15 minutes of Vivarium’s barely 90-minute runtime for Gemma and Tom to find themselves stuck. The couple drive around for hours in search of an way out after their realtor disappears, but every turn brings them back to the same house. Unsure of what to do, the couple then try burning down the home, but the structure soon reappears. Gemma and Tom are trapped, and they soon realize that their only chance of escape is to commit to life in their new surroundings.

But then the baby appears. In a box, on the street, and out of thin air when the couple least expects it. The child grows quickly, and, in doing so, drives a divide between the once strong duo. Gemma sees the child as something to love and care for, while Tom believes it’s some kind of monster whose sole reason for existing is to break what little sanity the pair has left. He believes they should kill the child in defiance of whatever being or entity has trapped them, but Gemma believes they should raise it. 

The child, much like the place Gemma and Tom find themselves stuck in, is much more than meets the eye. Clearly not the product of the couple, the child often repeats things Gemma and Tom say. It also screams, but in such a way that it emits a tone that no human can recreate, and it does so until its needs are met. What does it want? Why is it here? No one knows.

Vivarium moves so quickly that viewers don’t have time to consider what does and doesn’t make sense, nor does the film allow space to figure out the rules of the strange scenario. The inability to think too much about any one element of the film allows the house-of-cards-like structure hiding at the core of this allegory on adult relationships to retain a solid foundation when such a thing is never really earned. Viewers, much like Gemma and Tom, have no choice other than to go with whatever happens and try to figure out what to do from there.

Despite a series of third act twists that attempts to explain the preceding two acts of chaos by going even farther off the rails, Vivarium will keep viewers glued to their seats. The answers may not be enough to please everyone, but the film does offer more than enough escapism to help us forget the hell of modern life. 

Grade: B-minus. Rated R. Now available on Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu, and YouTube

(Photo: Saban Films)