Vivarium

I had heard about this film from a reviewer i watch on YouTube, she mentioned it's not for everyone but based on her synopsis I figured it'd be up my alley as i like mind bending films. Overall, I found it enjoyable, I liked the premise and the general mood of the film. It was slow in many places, I'd even venture to say it's a slow paced film in its entirety, but it only really feels slow in certain places. I'd like to imagine that's what the director was trying to convey; monotony, lethargy, emptiness, but it did drag on sometimes. The ending was slightly anticlimactic in my opinion and in general i felt the story left much to be desired. But again I like the idea of it, it just felt very bare bones like it wasn't fully fleshed out yet. Perhaps it could be better as a book where one can spend more time on the details. Would i recommend this? If you like movies with a hint of sci fi/psychological mind bending then maybe you'd find it pleasant enough. Not something I'll be revisiting though.

Though 'Vivarium (2019)' isn't necessarily a bad in-the-moment viewing experience, it ultimately emerges as a frustrating and almost pointless endeavour. It requires a lot of patience, as most slow-burning things do, but it doesn't reward that patience with anything other than its end credits. Most obviously, the movie is an incredibly cynical and downbeat allegory for the cyclical nature of - I suppose - 'typical' suburban life. It basically posits that life is nothing but a prison (cheerful, I know). The problem is that its metaphor falls short in a few key areas, most notably in how it connects itself to the 'true' surface-level aspects of the story. The actual machinations of its plot are so poorly defined that they lack any real relevance. Plus, in the real world, there's this little thing called happiness, which the flick seems to forget. Of course, movies are allowed to be dark. It's just that they ought to amount to something, to use their darkness as a way to frighten or provoke. Rather than using its nihilism to create fear, the piece just puts it on display. The actual story keeps going in circles. There aren't many twists on the central situation. Even when something new does crop up, the picture tends to bat its ideas aside in an effort to create an increasingly hopeless vibe. Essentially, it's plagued by long stretches where 'nothing' happens. Now, you could argue that's the point: its leads are stuck in infinite suburbia, after all. Just because the characters are bored, though, doesn't mean the audience has to be. The narrative is elusive and strange, an odd mixture of the mundane and the otherworldly, but it isn't intriguing. It really should be, too. The movie's premise and, even, some of its plot points have a lot of potential. That's why it's so frustrating that the whole thing just feels like a waste of time. It's well-made and, as I mentioned, it can hold your attention, but it's the sort of thing you almost regret giving your attention to. There's not much else to say, really. It's just not that good. Oh, and it features one of the most annoying children ever put to screen (through no fault of the actor); he's not freaky or unsettling, he's just plain irritating. 4/10

Unfortunately there's not enough substance here to fill up an entire feature film. There's A LOT of padding. For example the scene where they're listening to ska music in the car. It doesn't add anything much to the movie. It feels like the actors were told to just make up a dialogue on the spot.

For a movie of this kind to sustain our attention for a full hour and a half there needs to be more than just the initial concept. Unfortunatley there's not. There's no twist. There's no second act. There's a really interesting "nightmare"-type scene towards the end which feels for a moment like the movie's finally going somewhere. But then it dissipates and we're left with nothing much once more.

Why didn't the protagonists try and decipher the book that was delivered? Surely that was a vital clue? What caused their health to fail? Why didn't they try breaking into other houses on the street? I wanted these characters to fight to the death but they really went out with a wimper.

Could have been great.... but wasn't. Watch "the Platform" instead if you want surreal horror with a message.

Vivarium is a rather ingenious film about a young couple, excellently played by Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg, lured to a bland housing development by a salesman (a hilariously weird Jonathan Aris) where they are forced to raise a child. I really liked the first half, which is a visually striking, surreal existential drama that can be seen as a commentary on suburban life.

At first much of the movie is weirdly, darkly comical, but as it moves along the comical parts give way to despair and horror. This makes sense, and I think it's a reasonable direction for the movie to go based on its premise. But while the first half is *fun*, the second half is very much not, and that feels like a bit of a bait and switch.

The movie is also, at an hour and a half, too long. It's basically an extended Twilight Zone episode that takes one concept and explores it. There aren't really twists per se, we never learn much about this world, we just see how these people's lives unfold in this bizarre situation.

Ultimately I'm torn between rating this 6 or 7, since parts of it are quite good. But while I was fascinated early on, by the end I was just kinda bummed out.

Got a half decent idea for a short tv episode (but hey... leave out the cuckoo opening scenes then, no need to spell out the whole thing beforehand) but as a feature it's just an amateurish mess without much thought, balance in it's storytelling or coherence behind it (and yes it is "surreal" but that doesn't make it any better)