“Vivarium” (2019) is Lorcan Finnegan’s second directorial feature. It expands on and draws from his 2011 short film, “Foxes.” It is an eerie, disconcerting extension and enhancement, revisiting and stretching out the older bunch of thematic anxieties. The screenplay by Garret Shanley is firmly and refreshingly resistant to providing certain, definite explanations and contexts, hurling the viewer into the deep end and letting us make our own deductions and assessments.
Therefore, it remains thrillingly unpredictable and terrifically nerve-wracking till its climax, taking weirder, bizarre turns as it progresses. It is a tale bustling with peculiarities, with its lead actors, Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg, lending solid emotion and bringing credibility to a series of highly bonkers circumstances. They anchor the strange world of the film in the persuasively rendered characterization of a couple helplessly frazzled by their odd circumstances from which they can find no escape. It’s a tall ask, given the material, but their convincing turns help ground the narrative with authenticity and conviction.
Their escalating exasperation and exhaustion are placed against a world that seeks to defeat and bulldoze them into utter resignation. They are battered and rattled by the stiflingly homogenous world brimming with neat perfection in its features. It becomes a trap that slowly sucks the life out of them, and they are wholly hapless before it. The scenario is terrifying and inescapable, yet they keep faith in breaking out of the manicured world that gradually closes in on them.
Vivarium (2019) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The film opens with Gemma (Imogen Poots), a schoolteacher who is looking for a new house to move into with her partner, Tom (Jesse Eisenberg). She has been deferring the house-hunting for a while. When her colleague pushes her to do it, insisting the season is good for it and prices would be manageable, she gives it a shot. The couple land at the office of an estate called Yonder. A creepy manager, Martin (Jonathan Aris), somehow convinces them to check out one of their houses. They drive with him to Yonder.
The community is entirely vacant and a startlingly single-hued series of houses. Every house in the neighborhood is painted in an identical shade of green, and there’s not a single soul around. Martin shows them a house that has a welcome basket of strawberries and wine, which he offers, but both turn him down. The particular house also has a blue-colored room suitable for a boy. Martin laughingly says his company looks at long-term prospects while planning the houses.
While the couple are checking out the backyard, Martin vanishes. Martin’s car, too, is nowhere to be found. Tom is relieved, and the couple starts to drive back home. However, they quickly realize they are unable to get out of the neighborhood as they keep returning to the same house. Driving in a loop, they exhaust their fuel, enter the house, and stay the night.
The following day, they attempt to see the broader area and the distance to which the locality extends. But all Tom can see is the uniformity of green-hued houses. They try climbing over the fences, thinking it’d lead them out. However, they find themselves at dusk outside the exact house. The next morning, a basket of provisions arrives and suddenly a baby boy in it, with a note that asks the couple to raise him. Terribly upset, Tom tries to burn the house, but it quickly returns to its pristine state the very next morning.
The baby turns out to be a rapidly fast-growing creature with the voice of an adult that mimics the couple’s expressions and gestures. He tags along and refuses to leave their side. He keeps watching TV that only projects strange shapes and is capable of biting off anyone’s head. While Tom denies regarding him as a human, Gemma can’t help but project some maternal concern for the boy. Tom takes to digging the lawn, attempting to find what lies beneath, hopeful there must be a way out.
The boy rapidly grows into adulthood. She sees him with a book going off somewhere every morning. She tries to follow but loses him. When she returns to the house, she sees Tom flailing and in a poor spirit. His health has been deteriorating. The boy refuses to find any help for them, and Tom passes away. The boy puts him in a sealed packet and buries him in the pit.
The film has a strange coda when Gemma tries to pursue the boy and he suddenly lifts the curb and slips under. She follows him into a sort of underworld where passages and rooms blur into each other. She encounters the boy as a kid watching TV, a distraught mother, a couple in a position of intimacy, and a man who has cut his wrists and is bleeding to his death in a bathtub. When she finally makes it out, she collapses. The boy puts away her corpse in the same pit where Tom was dumped. The boy drives away, steps into Martin’s shoes at the Yonder office and a new couple comes in.
Vivarium (2019) Movie Themes Explained:
Suburban Claustrophobia
The film encapsulates a fraught mental state that comes with being utterly trapped with no possible escape. As the couple realizes they cannot break out of the loop despite their best efforts, their situation resembles one where no one is really listening to their misery. Their days go on in a suffocating, drab fashion where the pitilessness of their condition is continually exacerbated in its severe monotony. Their lives are razed into adherence to the suburban family replete with child-rearing. As they are tasked with raising the child, they confront the futile repetitiveness of their lives. It quickly starts to wear them out and strip them of all life, turning their existence into a series of mechanical exercises attuned to a habitual grind. They sink in the entrenched misery of tired rhythms and peter out into non-existence.
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