Vivarium

Many times recently I’ve berated myself for my instinctive desire to explain everything when I’m writing a book. Obviously, as an author you often leave things unsaid and unexplained for the reader, but I have a frustrating tendency to sometimes tie myself up in knots working out the logic of what are, frequently, illogical situations I’ve dropped my characters into. I think it’s the part of my brain where creativity crashes up against my practical side. I used to be an operations manager in another life, with a focus on understanding processes and making them work efficiently.

Sometimes, though, it’s important to experience something without understanding how or why. Case in point, this week’s movie recommendation – VIVARIUM.

A young couple looking for the perfect home find themselves trapped in a mysterious labyrinth-like neighbourhood of identical houses.

The Oxford dictionary defines a vivarium as: an enclosure, container, or structure adapted or prepared for keeping animals under semi-natural conditions for observation or study or as pets. It’s a spot on title for this movie. We generally don’t keep smaller pets like goldfish for their narrative arc. In VIVARIUM, a couple find themselves trapped in a kind of goldfish bowl, and though the movie delivers very few answers, it’s a very original and intriguing watch.

JESSIE EISENBERG and IMOGEN POOTS are strong as Tom and Gemma, the couple who, after visiting a bizarre estate agent’s office, end up trapped in cartoonish nightmare – a never ending estate filled with identical houses and a maze of featureless, inescapable roads. Trapped in a simplistic, childlike approximation of a perfect family home, they quickly realise they’ve no chance of escape. Cardboard boxes full of supplies are silently left outside the house for them by persons unknown, and no matter what they do – no matter how much damage they cause – number 9 remains untouched. And then another box is left outside that contains a baby boy, a single instruction printed on one of its flaps: raise the child and be released.

None of this makes any sense whatsoever, of course, and that’s absolutely fine. This is a film that uses its surreal bizarreness to make the viewer squirm as they imagine themselves trapped in the same fever dream of a situation. And that’s okay – don’t bother looking too deeply for explanations or underlying motives, just let the weirdness of the film wash over you. Don’t try to understand, just accept. It has an early SEVERANCE-like vibe at times, and that’s got to be a good thing.

Ironically, for a film set on an identikit housing estate where everything is intentionally simplistic and repeating, VIVARIUM is remarkably original. It’s not an entirely satisfying watch by any means. It plays like an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE or BLACK MIRROR, and suffers because of its feature length. It sags heavily in the middle, but the weirdness of the beginning and end (particularly the end) compensate for this. It’s at its best when it completely lets go and embraces its strangeness.

I had a good time with VIVARIUM. It’s written and directed by LORCAN FINNEGAN whose intriguing-looking next movie – THE SURFER starring NICHOLAS CAGE (him again!) – is out in May. The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime here in the UK, and at a time when we’re drowning in bland superhero movies and romcoms, freaky features like this should be celebrated.