“Vivarium” isn’t a fun watch, and not simply because it’s generally claustrophobic and insistently bleak. Even less fun: watching a pair of talented actors undergo the motions of an exhausted scenario that’s based almost entirely on pat assumptions about how per-fabricated and insidious modern suburbia is. In every dream home a heartache? Yeah, sure.
After visiting a creepy realtor (Jonathan Aris), Tom and Gemma (Eisenberg and Poots) are driven to then abandoned in Yonder, a really bland vision of a good blander gated community. Every house in Yonder is painted green, every backyard is mowed, and each cloud within the sky resembles a matte painting. Tom and Gemma attempt to escape, but they can't find Yonder’s exit. in order that they settle in at #9 (no address , presumably because they’re all the same), and periodically receive care packages of flavorless, but neatly vacuum-sealed perishables, like steak, eggs, and occasional . One such box includes a person's baby; on the side of the box are these instructions: “Raise the kid and be released.”
Time passes differently in Yonder, especially for Tom and Gemma’s unnamed child (Senan Jennings, then later Eanna Hardwicke). This kid is like one among the Midwich Cuckoos from “Village of the Damned,” only he’s not nearly as interesting: he ages faster than normal, sort of a dog, and he asks awkward questions that have negligible existential value, like what’s a dog, what’s a dream, etc. Tom and Gemma’s child also screams whenever they don’t undergo the motions of parenting him, like once they don’t serve him enough breakfast cereal. He also parrots their conversations back to them, like, oh, any time that Tom and Gemma argue. This kid is creepy, mostly because of Jennings and Hardwicke’s performances, but he’s not interesting enough to stay in your mind for long.
The same is essentially true of Tom and Gemma’s frustrated coping strategies: he tries to flee by digging a hole in their lawn while she tries to bond with Jennings and Hardwicke’s bad seed. Tom and Gemma’s respective activities define who they're in “Vivarium,” because the plot doesn’t hamper long enough to relate any valuable information beyond expository dialogue. this is often especially frustrating whenever Tom and Gemma’s situation tells us how they feel about one another , because those feelings are often as vague as Tom and Gemma’s ersatz son.
Most “Vivarium” scenes are too brisk and un-nuanced to flesh out Yonder’s ostensibly forbidding world of plastic, consumer-friendly domesticity. One moment we’re watching Tom trudge from the table back to his lawn hole. Then, a couple of minutes and scenes later, we’re watching him cough up a lung, and pantomime bone-deep weariness. Eisenberg’s a talented performer, but he’s not ok to suggest soul-sick mania during a few seconds.
Viewers also are left with variety of basic conceptual questions that are never really answered, because Tom and Gemma don’t waste much time talking their way through their problems. Is that lack of introspection alleged to mean something? It’s hard to inform , especially given how unyielding most of the movie’s dialogue is, like when Gemma wonderingly tells her child that “You’re a mystery, and I’m getting to solve you.” Equally banal dialogue exchanges, like when she tells him that a dream is “all kinds of moving pictures in your mind, but nobody else can see them,” also jogged my memory of the human sensitivity that’s often lacking from “Vivarium.” i do know this movie is meant to be about what it’s wish to be sucked dry by social expectations … but does it need to be so empty, too?
Every moment in “Vivarium” may be a frustrating synecdoche, since no single metaphor or image convey a thought that you simply probably couldn’t think of with yourself during an especially foul mood. Marriage may be a prison; parenting may be a scam; home ownership may be a trap; and you’ll probably die alone, without a considerable legacy. Understood, but who cares? If all you'll show me is what you think that isn’t genuine, you allow me with zero idea about what you think that authenticity seems like , or why I should care. “Vivarium” is that the horror movie equivalent of Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans: easy to breed , easier to forget.
CAST :
Imogen Poots ----- Gemma
Danielle Ryan-----School Mom
Molly McCann-----Molly
Jesse Eisenberg -----Tom
Jonathan Aris-----Martin
Côme Thiry-----Baby
Senan Jennings-----Young Boy
Eanna Hardwicke-----Older Boy
Olga Wehrly-----Crying Woman
Produced by
Todd Brown-----executive producer
Alexander Brøndsted ------co-producer
Jackson Clough-----associate producer
Brunella Cocchiglia-----executive producer
Maxime Cottray-----executive producer
Lorcan Finnegan -----executive producer
Christophe Hollebeke-----co-executive producer
Deirdre Levins-----associate producer
Philippe Logie-----associate producer
Brendan McCarthy-----producer
John McDonnell-----producer
Jean-Yves Roubin -----co-producer
Gabe Scarpelli-----executive producer
Ryan Shoup -----executive producer
Nick Spicer-----executive producer
Aram Tertzakian -----executive producer
Antonio Tublen-----co-producer
Music by
Kristian Eidnes Andersen
Cinematography by
MacGregor
Film Editing by
Tony Cranstoun
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