Vivarium

Vivarium is a rather ingenious film about a young couple, excellently played by Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg, lured to a bland housing development by a salesman (a hilariously weird Jonathan Aris) where they are forced to raise a child. I really liked the first half, which is a visually striking, surreal existential drama that can be seen as a commentary on suburban life.

At first much of the movie is weirdly, darkly comical, but as it moves along the comical parts give way to despair and horror. This makes sense, and I think it's a reasonable direction for the movie to go based on its premise. But while the first half is *fun*, the second half is very much not, and that feels like a bit of a bait and switch.

The movie is also, at an hour and a half, too long. It's basically an extended Twilight Zone episode that takes one concept and explores it. There aren't really twists per se, we never learn much about this world, we just see how these people's lives unfold in this bizarre situation.

Ultimately I'm torn between rating this 6 or 7, since parts of it are quite good. But while I was fascinated early on, by the end I was just kinda bummed out.

I thought Vivarium was a nice surprise from a movie I didn't expect much of. The story is completely refreshing, i can't recall watching another movie with a similar story so that's already a positive point. There are too much movies with repetitive stories so to see one with an interesting plot it gets my attention. It's a weird story, so if you don't like the bizarre (that's those with the negative reviews) then you should just not watch it, you will be disappointed. Vivarium is the kind of movie that makes me talk out loud during the viewing, what I would do if I was in that case and so on. The plot is intriguing, the decor very minimalistic but that definitely adds to the odd ambiance, the cast is very small but good. Once you're in the story you defintely want to know what the hell is happening and where they are going to? Maybe the end could have been a bit more elaborated but overal it's a movie that deserves a better rating, just for creativity alone.

But then came the rest of the film. Tedious, repetitive, dull. I was SO glad when it was over. Ick.

Though 'Vivarium (2019)' isn't necessarily a bad in-the-moment viewing experience, it ultimately emerges as a frustrating and almost pointless endeavour. It requires a lot of patience, as most slow-burning things do, but it doesn't reward that patience with anything other than its end credits. Most obviously, the movie is an incredibly cynical and downbeat allegory for the cyclical nature of - I suppose - 'typical' suburban life. It basically posits that life is nothing but a prison (cheerful, I know). The problem is that its metaphor falls short in a few key areas, most notably in how it connects itself to the 'true' surface-level aspects of the story. The actual machinations of its plot are so poorly defined that they lack any real relevance. Plus, in the real world, there's this little thing called happiness, which the flick seems to forget. Of course, movies are allowed to be dark. It's just that they ought to amount to something, to use their darkness as a way to frighten or provoke. Rather than using its nihilism to create fear, the piece just puts it on display. The actual story keeps going in circles. There aren't many twists on the central situation. Even when something new does crop up, the picture tends to bat its ideas aside in an effort to create an increasingly hopeless vibe. Essentially, it's plagued by long stretches where 'nothing' happens. Now, you could argue that's the point: its leads are stuck in infinite suburbia, after all. Just because the characters are bored, though, doesn't mean the audience has to be. The narrative is elusive and strange, an odd mixture of the mundane and the otherworldly, but it isn't intriguing. It really should be, too. The movie's premise and, even, some of its plot points have a lot of potential. That's why it's so frustrating that the whole thing just feels like a waste of time. It's well-made and, as I mentioned, it can hold your attention, but it's the sort of thing you almost regret giving your attention to. There's not much else to say, really. It's just not that good. Oh, and it features one of the most annoying children ever put to screen (through no fault of the actor); he's not freaky or unsettling, he's just plain irritating. 4/10

The 27th March of 2020 is a good day, a decent day, a day to enjoy a fresh Jesse Eisenberg double feature - "Resistance" and "Vivarium". The latter proved to be an entertaining and thoughtful parable in the atmospheric and thematic traditions of "The Twilight Zone", yet not without its flaws and misses.

"Vivarium" is almost entirely based on a metaphor/s, a parable of an often-used theme, a story that knows what it wants to say but, despite a nice flow of inventiveness, can't keep it consistently substantial. The vert first minutes, the intro sequence, heavily foreshadows what ideas are to follow without even using any characters yet. Later on, there are points where the commentary is perhaps too obvious and spoon-fed. Rushed-in family-hood, the challenges of parenthood, ownership and more similar ideas are presented and worked into a dystopian, lab-rat-like environment. There's a decent dose of humor injected in it as well, the more grim kind. The movie plays off its cast's content and realistic little performances, a top-notch, eye-pleasing production design and various atmosphere-setting devices, trying to be an intriguing survival drama that's swimming around the surface while continuously hinting on a something deeper. The deeper never truly comes. "Vivarium" succeeds at being a drawn-out episode of what could be an anthology horror series, but as a full feature it lacks additional components. For the most part, it is enough with the presented themes, the distressing and messed up character's new routine and the fantastic, mysterious elements surrounding it, but... "Vivarium" has got style, but half-way through it slowly ceases to be enough & as a climax we receive... even more style. Basically, as far as atmosphere, special effects and indie arthouse creativity goes, "Vivarium" is a great little flick worth seeing, but chances of eventual underwhelment are there.

For anyone who loves oddball indies, mysterious concepts, metaphors, borderless creepiness and what people call "Twilight Zone-esque", "Vivarium" is a journey worth taking. Should it succeed, thoughts might be provoked. My rating: 7/10.