Nightmare in suburbia
VIVARIUM
★★★★
(Cert 15, 98mins. Streams from today on all major platforms)
THE LAST cinemas may have closed but this bizarre sci-fi movie couldn’t be more timely. Screenwriter Garret Shanley and director Lorcan Finnegan (Without Name) summon up chills and uncomfortable laughs in the story of a young couple trapped in a cookie-cutter suburban house with a demonic child.
The film was intended to tap into fears of parenthood and conformity. But a week after the nation’s schools were closed, it feels like an allegory about the horrors of self-isolation.
Primary school teacher Gemma (Imogen Poots) and gardener Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) play a couple from the city who are considering settling down in the suburbs.
After finding themselves on the end of the world’s creepiest sales pitch (something is clearly off with Jonathan Aris’s rep Martin), they half-heartedly agree to follow his car out to a new housing estate calledYonder.The estate is even weirder than the salesman with rows of identical empty houses as far as the eye can see, all rendered in deliberately ropey CGI.
After leading the couple inside number 9, Martin disappears.
Gemma and Tom are relieved, taking their cue to climb into their car and head back to the city. But whatever direction they take, they end up back at number 9.
When they run out of petrol, they give up and head inside.When food and medical supplies begin arriving, they realise someone, or perhaps something, is watching.
After a few weeks, another box