Vivarium (2019)

July 12, 2020 9:38 AM

A young woman (Imogene Poots) and her fiancé (Jesse Eisenberg) 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.

Directed and co-written by Lorcan Finnegan. Available streaming in the US via Amazon Prime.

posted by DirtyOldTown (5 comments total)

Cool vibe, some interesting ideas, and striking imagery... but it didn't amount to much for me. There was some hackneyed symbolism about the monotony of the suburbs, the rote cyclical quality of raising kids. But all in all, nothing any college sophomore honors student couldn't cough out between bong tokes.

If they had wanted to go with such a well-worn thematic construct, they should have at least had the guts to go at it with sharper knives, more vicious satire. I mean, I'm a suburban parent who lives in a subdivision, but it's not like I always love that. This didn't so much get under my skin an challenge me as use a lot of style to produce a standard "meh."

Still, the direction was good. I'd probably see Finnegan's next one.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:22 PM on July 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

I agree with DOT. Felt like this is the kind of movie I should like and I wanted to like it but it just felt tiresome to me.
posted by Justinian at 1:47 PM on July 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

I note that one danger of making a movie about the dangers of monotony is ending up with a monotonous movie.
posted by Justinian at 1:47 PM on July 12, 2020 [8 favorites]

Getting to the end was an okay journey, if a bit dull, but that ending. I was like, "That's it?"
posted by Short Attention Sp at 5:24 AM on August 11, 2020

I really wanted to see more of the world underneath the sidewalk, or to have it matter somehow.

Imogen Poots is a great actress but far too much of her just reacting.
posted by fleacircus at 9:44 PM on April 24, 2021