Vivarium
released 2019
www.ink2quill.com

“Vivarium” is a scifi, thriller and international production between Ireland, Denmark and Belgium produced by John McDonnell, Brendan McCarthy, Todd Brown, Brunella Cocchiglia, Maxime Cottray, Lorcan Finnegan, Christophe Hollebeke, Gabe Scarpelli, Ryan Shoup, Nick Spicer, Aram Tertzakian and Antonio Tublen. It was directed by Lorcan Finnegan who cowrote the screenplay with Garret Shanley. It stars Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Danielle Ryan, Molly McCann, Jonathan Aris, Come Thiry, Senan Jennings, Eanna Hardwicke, Olga Wehrly, Jack Hudson, Michael McGeown and Mark Quigley.

Vivarium IMDb webpage

“Vivarium” is the story of a couple Tom, played by Jesse Eisenberg, and Gemma, played by Imogen Poots. They are looking to buy a house under the pressure of an impending rise in house prices. The movie starts with some pretty sinister overshadowing with the image of a newly hatched cuckoo pushing the two other bird babies out of the nest and to their death. The couple visit a strange real estate business who takes them to a real estate development called Yonder. In Yonder all the houses look the same, painted the same green color, lined up one after the other. The neighborhood looks like a model. Real estate agent Martin, played by Jonathan Aris, disappears while the couple is in the house and they find themselves stuck in Yonder with no way out. They are stuck in a vivarium.

Now this story sounds simple, and it is, but it is no less a good watch. The neighborhood of Yonder is basically a cage for the couple, a vivarium, albeit a poorly thought out one. It can also be called a nest or a prison. The couple is not only stuck in Yonder but they do not know why they are being held captive or by whom they are being held captive and we the audience know just as little. They are the only people in Yonder up until a mysterious child shows up. Keep in mind that all of the other houses are empty and the clouds in the sky are all the same. This gives the feel of living in a Hollywood set. The food they are given has no taste, nothing has any smell and even the grass and earth is artificial. Vivarium is too artificial to be a comfortable fit for the couple or anyone else for that matter. Some bloggers are calling Yonder a computer game or simulation like the Sim games others call it an alien construct for an alien invasion. I think it is none of those.

Movies like “Vivarium” are full of foreshadowing, metaphors of all kinds, clues in the background etc. For example, I think that the reason the couple´s house was number 9 was because it represented the 9 months a baby was in the womb and the 9 months it took the alien child to reach adulthood and leave the nest, so to speak. (I don´t want to give away any spoilers.) The fact that everything in Yonder was so cookie cutter was because it was obviously built by beings who did not have a clue about people and human societies.

So my big question was that if I was stuck in Yonder with my significant other how would we get out? Obviously, you can´t walk out using the streets or even fly out if you had access to that kind of technology. You also don´t seem to be able to dig yourself out as Tom and the residents before him found out, to their chagrin. You also cannot count on the help of the alien child because he clearly has only his interests in mind. So how to escape?

Well one way would be to lock the non-human, alien being, who is in the form of a child, in the car until the beings who built and run the vivarium show up. That might get you ejected from the vivarium. Another possible way out would be to think outside the box and explore the way of traveling through the layers of the vivarium the way Gemma did by accident. That might mean traveling to each layer and possibly getting the people of each layer to follow you out or at least not cooperate and the vivarium would become unsustainable. You could also try to decrypt the book and TV programs the alien watches to learn what it knows and find the way out of the vivarium.

“Vivarium” is a well made film with plenty of Easter eggs for those people that like to look for them. Its story is very symmetrical but well done. So enjoy it.

John

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