The film Vivarium is nothing short of a nightmare. Released in 2019, this psychological thriller explores the horrifying turn of events that leave a young couple, played by Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg, in a living nightmare. While this storyline has potential, my personal take on the film isn’t the best, giving it a 1/5 on the rating scale. The title itself even seemed promising – “vivarium” describes an enclosure meant to keep living organisms under a close watch. But, if anyone was kept in a hamster ball of sorts, it was those watching it. This film is one that you want to watch until the very end, because you think that it will get good at some point, but it just doesn’t. The best way I can describe this is, as I stated earlier, being a hamster trapped in a ball, running as fast and as far as you can, only to realize that you are going to be within the same walls of plastic until the very end.
The film begins with a young couple who are looking to start a family, but are first in need of finding a promising home. Thus, they go on a tour of this gated community, only to find themselves lost in a maze of never ending picture perfect homes. Whenever they try to escape, they only seem to get deeper into the maze, often ending right back where they had started. The couple remain in denial, and as time goes on, they begin to lose their sanity and tensions between them rise. A strange creature, who seems to be human but holds some alien-like qualities, occasionally drops by the house the couple have inhabited to give them food. But one day, in place of food, they are left with a baby boy. As the film progresses, the two main characters fall deeper and deeper into a state of insanity and their relationship falls apart. They continue to argue as they both search for a way to escape, ultimately never finding a way out of this never ending nightmare. Even after their countless attempts, time goes on and they are forced to live in the vivarium and care after this rapidly growing boy. The boy grows months in days and soon becomes the same age as them, providing the audience with at least one somewhat unpredictable twist. Although, this twist is one that was short lived as the film seemed to end just as it could have finally gotten good.
The theme of nightmares is carefully woven throughout the film: the idea of no escape is one that is a nightmare for many, and for these two characters the rest of their lives seem to be a living nightmare. When there is no chance of change, no way to be heard no matter how much you scream for help, there is no doubt that you have found yourself in a very real nightmare. I would argue that the concept of this nightmare itself is intriguing and powerful in terms of audience engagement, but the execution of this idea was poor. In order to fully understand the extent of which this living nightmare affects the main characters it is important to see the ways in which they deteriorate, but this film had an unbalanced focus on the marital relationship between the two instead. In a way, it felt like the film was meant to be a commentary on putting as much strain as possible on a relationship to see if you will prevail, which isn’t what I was hoping for when I pressed play.
Another major factor that led me to my poor rating of this film was its predictability. It was obvious from the start that something was off with this couple, and with the man who led them into their nightmare of a life. As the film progressed it felt like there was no end in sight and the film lacked a clear purpose. This lack of purpose is something that truly took away from the cinematography of the work itself. There were many interesting portions of the film where there would be a combination of strange color schemes and fast changing scenes as a way to immerse the audience into this nightmare, but these moments just felt pointless in the grand scheme of things. Each scene was a variation of another, with no true progression of the plot. Man and woman would fight, man would dig hole and be angry, woman would stare angrily at alien child. Everyday seemed to be the same, which I can understand to be a purposeful choice of the director, to give the audience a look into the mundaneness of these characters’ life, but once again this was executed poorly. Truth be told, the entire film felt like a commercial of some sort, a never ending thread of dialogue that I just wanted to skip over until I got to watch something real.
A final factor contributing to my poor rating of this film was the acting, and the overall portrayal of the characters. Now, I may be a bit biased, but I have never really liked Jesse Eisenberg. I’m not entirely sure why, but it feels like almost every character he plays is the same – not to mention that he is a complete rip off of Michael Cera. But, even though Michael Cera is one of my favorite people of all time, I’m not sure I would have liked this film that much more with him as the main character. Anyway, moving on from the Eisenberg slander, the portrayal of the characters themselves were just… bad. They were both shallow and superficial in more ways than one. Furthermore, the movie was littered with cliches, which links back to my predictability argument. For example: woman wanted to care for child because of motherly instinct, man wanted to send child as far away as possible. Female attachment to alien baby makes male jealous of the attention. I would argue, if this true situation were real, attention would be the least of either individual’s concern. And if it was… perhaps they deserved to be put in this nightmare?
A major part of this film was their disagreement regarding the treatment of the (very clearly alien) baby and the way both characters dealt with this was very mediocre. This whole plotline continued for what felt like the entirety of the movie and a solution was never really reached. Adding on to this, the arguments this couple had were so strange. They were very obviously stuck in a horrible nightmare but the way they coped with this, or lack of coping altogether, felt strained and forced. It was as if the director had purposely told both actors to give as little emotion as possible, even though they were faced in a never ending cycle of isolation.
All in all, please do not waste your time with Vivarium. Yes the title sounds cool and the actors seem promising, but it is most definitely not worth 97 minutes of your life. The plot leads nowhere, the storyline is predictable, the acting is mediocre, and the ending is so very disappointing. Yes, the portrayal of a never ending nightmare is very real, but it is moreso the watcher living in the nightmare rather than the theme of the film itself.