Hello. We’re four months into the Coronavirus takeover of America. I know a lot of people in this country have decided that “we have to move on with our lives” and that “Coronavirus is here to stay.” So they’ve just been vacationing, going to bars, attending Chainsmokers concerts, and what have you. But that’s not the reality in our household right now. Some days the closest I get to an outing is sitting on my porch and staring at the parking lot. Yeah, it sucks. But this is the reality the other half of Americans who aren’t “moving on with their lives” are going through.
So to spice things up, my husband and I have been having movie nights just to give ourselves something to look forward to. This past week, we watched Vivarium, a 2019 film directed by Lorcan Finnegan, written by Garret Shanley, and starring Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots.
Oh boy. Spoiler-free review to follow.
Here’s the set up. Gemma (Poots) and Tom (Eisenberg) are a couple living somewhere in the UK. Gemma is a teacher and Tom (get this) is a… gardener? Yes, Eisenberg is playing a gardener. You’re just going to have to suspend your disbelief and go with me on this journey.
Anyhow. Gemma and Tom want a home, so they go to an agent who takes them to check out some homes that are “near enough and far enough.” To which I would immediately have responded, “Nah, dude, I need an address and I need to know where the closest coffee shop is.” But that’s me.
If you’ve been to one of those neighborhoods where every house looks the same, that’s what this neighborhood is like. But much worse. So much worse, in fact, that Gemma and Tom can’t figure out how to leave. Next thing they know, they’ve been delivered a baby in a box and are told if they raise the baby, then they will be set free. Nightmare.
This movie does a great job of being ominous and horrifying from the get go. Without giving too much away, the uncanniness of this child is unsettling right from the jump. It’s clear that the child they’re raising is sort of human but not really. It’s also clear that they are being toyed with by outside forces that they cannot reach out to. They can’t leave their home. They can’t escape one another. Every day begins to feel the same.
What didn’t work so well for me is how obvious the symbolism and the trajectory of the movie was. If you pay attention to the opening scene of the film, it sort of tells you exactly what you’re about to watch. Here's how it’s described on Wikipedia: “The film opens with a short clip showing the parasitic lifecycle of cuckoos, who lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Once hatched, the cuckoo pushes the mother bird’s young out of the nest and is then tended to by the surrogate mother. By the end of the clip the cuckoo is disturbingly larger than the mother bird, greedily eating all she has to offer.” Yes, I just quoted Wikipedia. JOURNALISM.
Yeah, that foreshadowing is so clear that it almost seems like a spoiler for the whole damn movie. But just in case you didn’t get it, in the next scene, Gemma explains to one of her students what cuckoos do. And that nature can be cruel. Get it?
But of course there’s more going on in this story. As with all [good] horror, the weird horror that’s happening in the movie also works as a metaphor for a real fear that many people have in real life. That’s part of what makes [good] horror so scary. We think, “Well, this couldn’t happen in real life… but then why am I still so scared?” Because yeah, this sort of does happen in real life all the time.
The metaphor here is kind of obvious, too. Young adults fear growing up, being stuck in a home, being stuck with a mortgage, being stuck in a marriage, being stuck with a child that they might not even really like all that much. All of that is at work in this movie. Vivarium is the fear of suburbia and mundanity made sci-fi and supernatural.
But there’s one other horrifying thing about this movie that the creators couldn’t have planned for. And you’ve probably already guessed what it is. Like the characters in this movie, many of us who are afraid of the pandemic are still stuck in our homes. We can’t leave. But not only can we not leave, we don’t really see an end in sight any time soon. That part made this movie really difficult to sit with after it’s over.
My feeling after I watched Vivarium? I looked around at my house, at my husband, at my pets, at the walls I’ve been stuck in between for four godforsaken months, and I felt my skin crawling. The horror of the film had bled into my real life, and it made me really uncomfy.
So if you’re already feeling the anxiety of Coronavirus, should you skip Vivarium? Up to you. It was an interesting enough movie, and it’s short enough that it gets to the point quickly before you get bored with the concept. Just don’t expect too many surprises. And if you feel like running out of your house screaming afterwards, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Vivarium is available streaming on Amazon and lots of other places. Check it out.