Vivarium Review (4/13/2020)

There's an inherent sense of nihilism lurking in the center of the idyllic model of contemporary American life. There's this idea that all an individual life is good for is continuing a cycle of consumption and reproduction; creating more victims for the system in a seemingly infinite loop. When put like that, it feels cold and impersonal - but it means something very, very different when applied to your own life. How would you feel if you were forced to confront that your life - which you can only live once - is to be wasted entirely for the purpose of raising another cog in the wheel, working to support them and then dying?

Vivarium, directed by Lorcan Finnegan and starring Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots, is a science fiction thriller that seeks to literalize this abstract horror in a bizarre, surreal way. It's not entirely successful as a movie, but it has a remarkable conviction to this sole focus - almost to a fault. There's a sense of existential horror beneath every frame as the central couple - played by Eisenbeg and Poots - is forced to toil in this hellish alien environment. When the two visit a suburban housing community named Yonder, they are imprisoned in a surreal, labyrinthine world where everything is the same, and there is no escape - unless, of course, they raise the child that has been left for them there.

While there's somewhat more of a direct threat here, the forces that did this to them are still mysterious and unseen, and there's an uncomfortable parallel between their reality and ours, as we watch a family turn apart on itself; parents who abuse and neglect their own child and - to an extent, each other - because they have no other physical thing to blame other than themselves for their predicament. The unseen mechanisms that make up our grinding wheel of a society are nebulous and hard to grasp, and how can you rebel against something you don't even properly understand? These are issues that are portrayed very literally in Vivarium, but can be seen in any portrayal of American suburbia; in stories of impassioned husbands and wives and the children they've grown to resent, stuck living the same unsatisfying life as everyone else until the day they die because they didn't feel they had any other choice.

Vivarium is an utterly chilling abstraction of the existential burdens that so many people in the Western world carry around every single day. Unfortunately, its laser sharp focus on this idea also works to its detriment. The characters and world are not really well developed for a feature length film, and while I found it to be captivating upon my first watch, I can't think of anything that would draw me back again. It wears its message on its sleeve, and there's not really anything else to it. It's a film with profound insight and craft but not enough of a soul, playing like a thought experiment more than an art piece.

Ultimately, I think this film would have been much better as a short film. Its lack of depth wouldn't have been a problem in 20 minutes rather than 90, and while I never felt it dragged on, I also don't feel like the extended runtime allowed Finnegan to add anything of value to the message. Hell, even though I did my best to avoid spoilers, I feel like most of the film's message is still represented in this review alone. Everything would have worked so much better in a brief, compact burst of cinema; a singular thought experiment rather than a full narrative piece.

As it is, Vivarium is a decent film. I was captivated enough watching it, and nothing about it really aggravated me. As an art piece, it had a clear message that was delivered well, and in the moment it put me in a suitably existential state of horror and despair. But there's just not enough here to justify its 90 minute run. It's an excellent short film stretched out to the point that it's shallow and flimsy when held up to any sort of scrutiny. There's nothing here that makes me want to come back to it, and in a year I doubt I'll even be thinking about it.