A young woman and her fiancé are in search of the perfect starter home. After following a mysterious real estate agent to a new housing development, the couple finds themselves trapped in a maze of identical houses and forced to raise an otherworldly child.
Vivavirum slots in neatly next to Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbes Greener Grass and Richard Stanleys Color Out of Space to form a loose trilogy of deeply surrealist releases in 2019 that skewer our perceptions of suburbia and the family unit. Director Lorcan Finnegan has brought to life a disturbing, thoughtful and bleakly funny mutant of a movie.
Read Jake's full article... https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-vivarium-what-makes-a-house-a-horrific-home
Pretty pointless movie. Signed up to review because I couldn't believe the rating this received. Yes, you get a weird realtor and a creepy kid but other than that you just watch the couple basically repeat each day hating being stuck. You're not going to learn anything more about the weird freaks or why they're doing what they're doing and will end up feeling like you just wasted your time. Yeah, I get it's supposed to be satire but pass.
Review on Horror Focus
This indie sci-fi thriller Vivarium from Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan is many things, one definitely being quite the head-scratcher. Not because of it being an intellectually challenging story, or one that is laced with twists and turns to create an unpredictable viewing, but a film that delivers a narratives so peculiar that it is like something you've never seen before. Take this with a pinch of salt, as there's certainly aspects which don't make the landing of such an ambitious plot, but let it also be known that Vivarium contains some impressions visual and narrative storytelling, enough to forgive some of the mid-act waffle that cripples the films momentum.
Finnegan gets the ball rolling with pow...
Amazing watch, will watch again, and can recommend.
Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg (both from "The Art of Self Defense") are amazing in their roles as an abducted couple force to raise a child.
This is an amazing premise (see "Solar Opposites" for something similar), and one that is extremely hard to discuss without spoilers. This is a wonderful mix of tropes. There is a prisoner / abductee trope, there is "adoption of a strange child" trope, there is a "troubled couple" trope, there is even a mystery trope.
I'm fully of the opinion that the right thing to do in any abduction situation is to not reward the criminals with what they want because there is no reason that while they have all the power that they're going to do anything...
Sci-fi thriller, just not "on the edge of sit" type. Lorcan Finnegan remakes his short film Foxes and adds a life message to it.
It's a movie whose premise had promise but was never thoroughly explored.
I read the generally high praise in the reviews for this movie and admittedly, I was fooled. I'm convinced that at least the individual here who likened part of its premise to the animated series, "Solar Opposites," while not being entirely off the mark, neglected to mention that unlike Solar Opposites, there is no payoff with Vivarium. Unlike Solar Opposites, we don't know why Vivarium exists. We don't know why people are expected to raise these mysterious hominids. We don't know what their purpose is, other than to entrap first home buyers, like some kind of otherworldly predatory lender. Is it a euphemism for unscrupulous property developers? Who knows?
Only ...
Vivarium was eerie and creepy, and definitely a movie that will mess with your head, albeit probably in ways other than you anticipated. You'll be tricked in the beginning into believing this movie is actually a sociological observation of the slow and robotic death of suburban life: you and your nuclear family settle into middle class conformity in a large, seemingly endless design of mazes and hedges, condemned to repeat the endless cycle of home, school (or work), home, sleep, rinse and repeat. And it certainly gives one those unsettling vibes, especially when the creepy box with the build-a-baby arrives at their prison doorsteps.
Rather, this is something else entirely. While it does well maintaining that nearly subtle sense of wrong...
A young couple go to an estate agent to seek out their dream home. They encounter the almost robotic "Martin" who offers to show them their ideal residence - and so off go Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg to inspect. They discover a typical detached house in the suburbs, surrounded by identical homes that leave them a bit cold. When their guide disappears, they decide to go home - except; they are caught in a labyrinthine network of streets that always brings them back to "No. 9". Soon, a baby in a box arrives and their happiness ought to be complete - except they have no other human contact and so slowly, but surely, start to go a bid mad. The kid has an infuriating habit of screaming loudly when he doesn't get what he wants - and I felt m...
"Vivarium" is one of those movies that pulls you in with an interesting concept but leaves you questioning everything, especially the choices the characters make. The story follows a couple who find themselves trapped in a seemingly endless suburban neighborhood, forced into a bizarre and unsettling routine. The mystery keeps you engaged, but the characters decisions often feel frustrating. Not in a "bad script" way, but in a way that makes you wonder if they were written to be this passive on purpose. The pacing leans toward slow-burn horror, relying more on psychological unease than traditional scares.
The directing does a solid job of maintaining tension, making the whole thing feel claustrophobic and surreal. The cinematography enhan...
