Within less than 15 minutes, Vivarium already has its main characters, schoolteacher Gemma (Imogen Poots) and her boyfriend Tom (Jesse Eisenberg), trapped in a nightmarish suburban housing development that they are unable to escape. That ruthlessly efficient set-up wastes almost no time establishing character relationships or backgrounds, but once director Lorcan Finnegan and screenwriter Garret Shanley have Gemma and Tom right where they want them, the movie struggles a bit over the next 80 or so minutes to figure out what to do with them.
Looking to buy their first house, Gemma and Tom stumble into the sales offices of a development called Yonder, which an extremely creepy agent describes as “near enough and far enough.” Martin (Jonathan Aris), with his slicked-back hair, pristine white shirt and black tie, looks like an old-fashioned door-to-door salesman, and he speaks in such an unsettlingly stilted (yet inappropriately familiar) way that it’s hard to believe Gemma and Tom don’t immediately recoil in horror and run out the door.
Instead, they get in their car and follow Martin along misty back roads to Yonder, with its seemingly endless rows of identical sickly-green houses. There’s no one else around, and the couple dutifully follow Martin through the tour of a house as creepy as he is, with paintings on the wall that depict the exact house they’re in and meticulously arranged furniture devoid of any personality. At some point during the tour, Martin simply disappears, leaving Gemma and Tom completely alone. They get in their car and attempt to leave, but no matter how long they drive around Yonder, they can't find a way out (and their cell phones, of course, have no service).
It’s an immediately disturbing premise, albeit one that could have come right out of Black Mirror (or, going back further, a Stephen King short story or a Twilight Zone episode). The filmmakers escalate the creepiness by having Gemma and Tom discover a mysterious box in front of the house containing what appears to be an infant boy with the ominous message, “Raise the child and be released.” The most effective stretch of the movie comes as the story jumps to three months later, when the boy (Senan Jennings) has somehow grown to the equivalent of six or seven years old.
The nameless child is clearly not human, speaking in a disturbingly adult voice and mocking Gemma and Tom with uncanny mimicry of their speech patterns. Although they wake up each morning literally giving the kid the middle finger, they’re obligated to pantomime parenthood because the boy emits a high-pitched shriek if they don’t, say, properly feed him cereal for breakfast. This turns the movie into a somewhat surreal take on the horrors of parenthood, stuck with a seemingly alien being who demands your constant attention and estranges you from your spouse. If Vivarium includes any potential satire or social commentary, it comes during these segments.
Despite knowing the child is some sort of sinister creature, Gemma starts treating him with a certain amount of tenderness. Meanwhile, Tom grows more sullen and becomes obsessed with digging a hole in the front yard that he believes will somehow lead to an escape route. The breakdown in the couple’s relationship is inevitable but still haunting, and Poots especially gives a grounded, emotionally resonant performance in a situation that is far from realistic (and gets to use her native British accent, which she too often has to hide for American movies).
However, the story kind of stalls from there, becoming monotonous as Gemma and Tom go through the same motions in their futile efforts to escape and to understand the strange being living in their house with them. Eisenberg becomes less and less of a screen presence as Tom retreats into hole-digging, and the filmmakers never use the extra time to delve into the couple’s history, aside from one tender story about their first meeting, which shows up near the end of the movie.
In the end, Gemma and Tom are more like symbols than people, which fits with the movie’s blunt, schematic storytelling. The narrative and visuals may not be subtle, but they’re still often effective, and the endless rows of identical houses, along with the uniform clouds in the sky, are consistently eerie to look at. After a mid-film lull, the finale ratchets up the surreal, dreamlike quality of the story, allowing Poots to really dig into Gemma’s desperation and despair.
That finale would probably have more impact in a 20-minute short film or even a 45-minute TV episode. Plus, the ultimate stinger that closes the movie is pretty obvious from its earliest scenes. But even if Vivarium doesn’t have as much power as it would in a more condensed format, it’s still a pretty mesmerizing viewing experience, at times harrowing and at times even sort of touching thanks to the impeccable design and Poots’ strong performance. If you’ve been on a binge of Black Mirror or Stephen King adaptations, this is a solid viewing selection to add to your list.
Starring Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Senan Jennings, Jonathan Aris and Eanna Hardwicke, Vivarium is available Friday through major VOD services.