VIVARIUM

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 15 | DVD Director Lorcan Finnegan Cast Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Jonathan Aris

With its themes of entrapment and soul-crushing repetition, Vivarium has got a hell of a lot closer to home since it was scripted and shot.

Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg play Gemma and Tom, a young couple whose house hunt leads them to Yonder, an uncannily uniform estate which turns out to be both deserted and, thanks to its impossible geography, impossible to leave. No matter which way they drive, they end up staying at home rather than enjoying a nice day out at Barnard Castle. Worse still, as the months pass they also become unwilling parental figures for a strange child who shrieks when he wants feeding, mockingly imitates them, and grows impossibly fast.

Accept the contrivances – given that the unravelling Tom decides to dig a big hole, it’s convenient that he’s a gardener and thus already had a shovel and ladder in his car – and forgive the ineffectual score (which, unusually, is actually too inobtrusive), and as Twilight Zone riffs go it’s appealing enough. But Rod Serling’s show very often had some kind of message. While you could argue that Vivarium is a satirical commentary on nuclear family suburban life, really all it seems to be saying is, “Hey, this is some pretty freaky shit, huh?”

Extras Just a five-minute behind-the-scenes featurette.