Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Vivarium Blu-ray Movie 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 Movie, Video Quality 

Vivarium is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Technical data on this shoot is rather sparse by my reckoning, but I'm assuming this was digitally captured and finished at a 2K DI (as always with my reviews, if someone can point me to authoritative information, private message me and I'll happily update the review). This is an intentionally highly stylized presentation, as can perhaps be made out by some of the screenshots, at least when the film gets outside. The interiors of Number 9 are actually a bit on the dowdy side, and are frequently rather dimly lit. That, combined with some downright dark moments (see screenshot 18), can lead to deficits in fine detail and shadow definition. The emphasis on kind of pale, sickly greens "outside" (as is mentioned in the supplement, almost all of the filming, including supposed exterior shots, were done on a soundstage) can mean the palette is oddly skewed at times, but detail levels make it through this particular gauntlet rather well, all things considered. In more normal lighting conditions the palette looks natural, but stylistic restraints mean it never really pops in any meaningful way. My score is 4.25.

Vivarium Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Vivarium features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that only intermittently gets a chance to really spread its sonic wings due to the very fact that the underlying premise of the film is one of claustrophobia. There are some fun effects that can dot the surrounds at times, though, including a recurring motif of Tom trying to dig his way out of his predicament in Number 9's yard, which leads to him hearing (or thinking he's hearing) odd voices and/or noises emanating from far beneath the ground. The score by Kristian Eidnes Andersen also helps to establish some width and depth, but a lot of the film remains anchored relatively narrowly. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout this problem free presentation.

Vivarium Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Lorcan Finnegan and Executive Producer Brunella Cocchiglia


• Creating the Suburban Nightmare of Vivarium (1080p; 20:53) is an above average featurette with a number of good interviews. This piece makes more overt some of the subtext in the film which is arguably left unexplored. It's perhaps salient to note that The Twilight Zone is referenced repeatedly by some of the creative staff. There's also some rather interesting discussion here about socioeconomic realities in Ireland with regard to vast empty housing developments that helped to spark the idea, though snippets from an earlier film called Foxes show Finnegan trafficking in at least some of the same content he does in Vivarium.

Vivarium Blu-ray Movie, 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.