Vivarium (2019) has the kind of incessant, weighty atmosphere which sticks with you; it riffs on the horrors of anonymous suburbia, taking the idea of the family and the joys of the property ladder to a hideous extreme. To accomplish this, it opts not to give the audience all the answers, something which has apparently been a source of frustration for some viewers. I can appreciate that; a little, just a little more explication would have been welcome here. However, overall this is a very engrossing film which accomplishes a great deal.
Gemma (Imogen Poots) and boyfriend Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are a young couple looking to buy their first place together. To this end, they pop in on an estate agent in town and meet the decidedly strange Martin (Jonathan Aris). Martin tells them about a new development, called Yonder, out on the edge of town. He offers to take them there for a look; they agree, and follow him there in their vehicle. Yet, just after showing them around Number Nine – one house among many absolutely identical ‘new builds’ – Martin disappears. Tom and Gemma try to leave themselves, but Yonder is a maze, and try as they might, they keep on rolling up outside the house they’ve been to see. They run out of fuel and have no option but to stay overnight in the house.
The next day, there’s been a delivery – food and basic toiletries. Then, another box arrives, containing a baby boy. ‘Raise the child – get released’ is the instruction printed on the box. As luck would have it, there’s already a nursery in the house – blue for a boy too – but it’s quickly clear that this nameless child is no ordinary child (or at least, he’s somewhat worse than other children). He grows at an abnormal rate. He emulates Gemma and Tom, but does not seem to understand human emotion. He screams until his basic needs, such as for food, are met. Gemma has grudgingly accepted her role in all of this, whereas Tom has retreated into himself, spending his days digging in the garden for what he thinks must be a way out. He wants to abandon care of the child, to see if this will draw out whoever it is that’s watching and controlling them, but something in Gemma makes her defend him. After all, perhaps if they successfully raise the boy, they’ll be able to go home. Life becomes a surreal routine.
The boy (Senan Jenkins) is, if I may, an effectively creepy little fucker; he disappears off on his own regularly, and seems to be in contact with whoever it is that’s behind it all. He returns one day clutching a book which is printed in some unfathomable language, and he obsessively watches the strange, monochrome patterns which pass for TV programmes in this place. Gemma tries to find out more about him, but she’s unable to; he has the mastery of the place, whereas she can’t ever keep up. Eventually, though, as the boy grows, she has to take desperate measures.
Do we discover what is going on here? Nope, not as such; the film’s key strength is in its strange, unsettling symbolism, and from the moment we see a cuckoo pushing a chick out of a nest at the beginning, that symbolism is pretty blatant: the grim anonymity of suburban life, the monotony of child-rearing and the impact on people who opt into all this. The notion that, after raising the boy there could be the opportunity for ‘release’ is an idea which is also explored, as what form this ‘release’ could take is disputed. The grinding tedium and hard work which Gemma and Tom are faced with here is also very unsettling, the environs oddly menacing. The sense of isolation here is effectively-wrought, and the fact that the child clearly knows a lot more than he’s letting on keeps the audience on the same level as Gemma (primarily), as it’s she that the child leans on most, exploiting her maternal instinct in order to thrive. It’s just as bleak when the child needs her no longer.
Some intriguing developments in the final act of the film beg far more questions than they ever answer: the film feels somewhere between Under the Skin and Paperhouse, sacrificing the expected denouement to pose one final question. However, overall the film is an effective, aesthetically-rich horror yarn, and I quite enjoyed the sensation of being dwarfed by whatever the hell is going on here. Definitely a winning choice for these days of social distancing.
Vivarium (2019) is available to stream now.