Imogen Poots

Jesse Eisenberg

Senan Jennings

Éanna Hardwicke

Jonathan Aris

Côme Thiry

Molly McCann

Danielle Ryan

Olga Wehrly

Fionn Lockett

Walter McCabe

Terence McEneaney

Sarolta Charlotte Simo

Stephen Morrison

Neil Guerin

Tom Speirs

Dave Flanagan

Tricia Perrott

Cassandre Warnauts

Thomas Gammeltoft

Christophe Hollebeke

Manuel Chiche

Violaine Barbaroux

Kristian Eidnes Andersen

Jacques Pedersen

Dirk Bombey

Catherine Marchand

Rory Dungan

Philippe Lambrechts

Philip Blake

Simon Keenan

Ciarán Tanham

Conor Kelly

Sean Weiss

Colm Bassett

Emilie Guéret

Con Dempsey

Laura Rafferty

Catherine Argue

Lorri Ann-King

Aoife Maher

Martin Maguire

Maurice Pierce

Greg Managhan

Paul Cullen

Jackie Jarvis

Gary Curran

Rory Gavin

Jason Cameron

Stéphane De Rocquigny

Lorcan Finnegan

Brendan McCarthy

Garret Shanley

Tony Cranstoun

Philip Murphy

MacGregor

John McDonnell

Colin Jones

Robert Barrett

Julia Davin-Power

Aoife Thunder

Antoine Gerard

Andy Walsh

Adrienne McGrane

Aoife Quinn

Joanne Carstairs

Perrine Lejeune

Jennie Readman

Niamh O'Loan

Adrien Maigre

Sinead Barry

Sébastien Lépinay

Jonathan Shaw

Toby Spigel

Kevin Jamotte

Dina Coughlan

Rory McPartland

François Tiberghien

Louis Zebo

Gabriel Bertrand

Renaud Quertainmont

Olivier Servais

Antoine Bellem

Pierre-Edouard Jasmin

Guillaume Renoir

Richie Egan

John McCarthy

Maxence Dedry

Simon Bergstrand

Kim Fersling

Georgi Atanasov

Simone De Salvatore

Marja Maccotta

Stéphanie Pottier

Sefian Benssalem

Rasmus Bro

Michel Denis

Mikael Windelin

Christina Jæger

Line Leth

Peter Hjorth

Ronald Grauer

Alexander Schepelern

Chris Basta

Dan Stirling

Rasmus Mølberg Meyer

Louis Storme

Julien Naudin

Patrick Ghislain

Science Fiction

Thriller

Mystery

Horror

Vivarium

Fantastic Films

Frakas Productions

XYZ Films

PingPongFilm

BeTV

Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland

Belgium

Denmark

Ireland

United States of America

English

baby

suburbia

suburb

trapped

body bag

real estate agent

backrooms

awestruck

SWITCH.

‘Vivavirum’ slots in neatly next to Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe’s ‘Greener Grass’ and Richard Stanley’s ‘Color Out of Space’ to form a loose trilogy of deeply surrealist releases in 2019 that skewer our perceptions of suburbia and the family unit. Director Lorcan Finnegan has brought to life a disturbing, thoughtful and bleakly funny mutant of a movie.
- Jake Watt

Read Jake's full article...
https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-vivarium-what-makes-a-house-a-horrific-home

Pretty pointless movie. Signed up to review because I couldn't believe the rating this received. Yes, you get a weird realtor and a creepy kid but other than that you just watch the couple basically repeat each day hating being stuck. You're not going to learn anything more about the weird freaks or why they're doing what they're doing and will end up feeling like you just wasted your time. Yeah, I get it's supposed to be satire but pass.

> **_Review on Horror Focus_**

This indie sci-fi thriller Vivarium from Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan is many things, one definitely being quite the head-scratcher. Not because of it being an intellectually challenging story, or one that is laced with twists and turns to create an unpredictable viewing, but a film that delivers a narratives so peculiar that it is like something you've never seen before. Take this with a pinch of salt, as there's certainly aspects which don't make the landing of such an ambitious plot, but let it also be known that Vivarium contains some impressions visual and narrative storytelling, enough to forgive some of the mid-act waffle that cripples the films momentum.

Finnegan gets the ball rolling with power, keeping the story taught enough that we are thrown straight into the mystery early doors. This works extremely well as the tension begins to bubble within the first ten minute mark. The performances here from our main cast member already begin to show their brilliance, especially Jonathon Aris who sets a chilling foreshadowing tone with his appropriately eerie character Martin. The small (yet effective) amount of screen time we have with Martin is enough to set the tone, and we, like Tom and Gemma are forced to endure something that is so ominously intense that it leaves a lingering sense of dread.

Unfortunately, this soon begins to simmer once Finnegan establishes the plot in its whole, and realisation settles on the simple fact that, after the 30 minute mark, there really isn't much else for the story to go. Yes the labyrinth maze of suburbia is strangely terrifying, and the strenuous repetition is effective, but after 15 minutes of having the child introduced, Vivarium begins to fall flat, and grow increasingly more stale up until after the sixty minutes in. The fantastic Poots and Eisenberg, and the deadpan humour do prevent this film from becoming a little too one-note, but this doesn't exuse more than a few scenes that will be a task to sit through, even in these current homebound world we are living in.



There is a glimmer of brilliance in Finnegan's choice of release here, as what our main couple are enduring is poetically reflective of the life we are living in this mad pandemic virus. I found myself identifying with the irritated attitude our characters develop, and sympathised with them when their child (the boy) was well deserving of a slap. Vivarium is intelligently relative right now, and can definitely be perceived as as Finnegan holding a mirror up to the idealistic yet treacherous concept of what makes the perfect home, and the urge to be the perfect family.

In fact, there's so much underlying aspects of Vivarium that are so incredibly reflective of the inevitable repetition that comes once a spunky couple are weighed down by family life, securing their "ideal" home and tolerating each others impurities under the same roof constantly. Finnegan exposes the dangers of the nuclear family here, and forces us to endure it too, warts and all. We even get those little moments in which Tom consistently chips away, digging a whole, not to be talked to, helped or interrupted by Gemma, who becomes a slave to ensuring nothing but contentment for their boy. This moment is humourous with a dark sting, and will be reflective of reality to many, but to those inside Vivarium is nothing but a nightmarish loop.

This distorted utopia Finnegan creates is what's most effective, orchestrated by a Burton-esque palette that is as gorgeous as it is hauntingly off-kilter. The early 80's, Romero's Day of the 

Dead-like synth is undeniably effective, and carries the tension through to the final act, which although doesn't hit a payoff point that excuses the slow middle act, does add to the bankers reality Finnegan has crafted, and highlights the eeriness established from the beginning. While Vivarium does lose a tone of momentum when it hits the mid-way point, by the time it reaches its end, I can't shake the distinct feeling of unease I had to endure for over eighty minutes, and I can't deny that a film like this was an experience I have quite been exposed to before. I have been feeling really under the weather these past few days, and let's just say this only made me feel worse. Great job, I guess?


VERDICT 
Vivarium is a simplistically disturbing suburban nightmare with a captivating story and little room for growth. Enduring its drab middle act may prove tricky, but once Finnegan blows the dust of the eerie intensity established from the beginning, you'll find there is much to be desired with this unsettling little indie-sci-fi thriller.

Kamurai

Amazing watch, will watch again, and can recommend.

Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg (both from "The Art of Self Defense") are amazing in their roles as an abducted couple force to raise a child.

This is an amazing premise (see "Solar Opposites" for something similar), and one that is extremely hard to discuss without spoilers. This is a wonderful mix of tropes. There is a prisoner / abductee trope, there is "adoption of a strange child" trope, there is a "troubled couple" trope, there is even a mystery trope.

I'm fully of the opinion that the right thing to do in any abduction situation is to not reward the criminals with what they want because there is no reason that while they have all the power that they're going to do anything to benefit the victims. We get see an exploration of what people do in a dire situation and given a task, similar to a couple different "Twilight Zone" episodes.

The production value is clearly here, and while they appear to have saved some money on limited locations, it clearly put to good use as the movie delves deeper into its story.

I can't recommend this enough, please give it a shot all the way through.

Oswaldo (BlvckBruh)

Sci-fi thriller, just not _"on the edge of sit"_ type. Lorcan Finnegan remakes his short film **Foxes** and adds a life message to it.

It's a movie whose premise had promise but was never thoroughly explored.

I read the generally high praise in the reviews for this movie and admittedly, I was fooled. I'm convinced that at least the individual here who likened part of its premise to the animated series, "Solar Opposites," while not being entirely off the mark, neglected to mention that unlike Solar Opposites, there is no payoff with Vivarium. Unlike Solar Opposites, we don't know why Vivarium exists. We don't know why people are expected to raise these mysterious hominids. We don't know what their purpose is, other than to entrap first home buyers, like some kind of otherworldly predatory lender. Is it a euphemism for unscrupulous property developers? Who knows?

Only thing I know is that by the end of it all, I felt totally ripped off. At around 90 minutes, it was 60 minutes too long. It's not even something that I can suggest is open to much interpretation.

If you just need something playing in the background while you're performing other work at home, even then it may be a stretch but it certainly doesn't deserve much better.

Vivarium was eerie and creepy, and definitely a movie that will mess with your head, albeit probably in ways other than you anticipated. You'll be tricked in the beginning into believing this movie is actually a sociological observation of the slow and robotic death of suburban life: you and your nuclear family settle into middle class conformity in a large, seemingly endless design of mazes and hedges, condemned to repeat the endless cycle of home, school (or work), home, sleep, rinse and repeat. And it certainly gives one those unsettling vibes, especially when the creepy box with the build-a-baby arrives at their prison doorsteps.

Rather, this is something else entirely. While it does well maintaining that nearly subtle sense of wrongness, of something being terribly just _off_, in the end, you may find yourself somewhat disappointed, as it is at this precise moment the film becomes like every other movie of its kind out there. Quite possibly, it is the end that is the most disturbing, for it seems to insinuate that humanity is as disposable as livestock.

CinemaSerf

A young couple go to an estate agent to seek out their dream home. They encounter the almost robotic "Martin" who offers to show them their ideal residence - and so off go Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg to inspect. They discover a typical detached house in the suburbs, surrounded by identical homes that leave them a bit cold. When their guide disappears, they decide to go home - except; they are caught in a labyrinthine network of streets that always brings them back to "No. 9". Soon, a baby in a box arrives and their happiness ought to be complete - except they have no other human contact and so slowly, but surely, start to go a bid mad. The kid has an infuriating habit of screaming loudly when he doesn't get what he wants - and I felt much like screaming myself as the cyclical pointlessness of this really dreary film did start to get on my nerves. Perhaps Lorcan Finnegan intended the potency of the sterility of the whole thing to engender a feeling of irritation from his audience; if he did then top marks. Otherwise, this is a total waste of the talents of two actors who could have found better ways to help us pass 100 minutes.

"Vivarium" is one of those movies that pulls you in with an interesting concept but leaves you questioning everything, especially the choices the characters make. The story follows a couple who find themselves trapped in a seemingly endless suburban neighborhood, forced into a bizarre and unsettling routine. The mystery keeps you engaged, but the characters’ decisions often feel frustrating. Not in a "bad script" way, but in a way that makes you wonder if they were written to be this passive on purpose. The pacing leans toward slow-burn horror, relying more on psychological unease than traditional scares.

The directing does a solid job of maintaining tension, making the whole thing feel claustrophobic and surreal. The cinematography enhances this with sterile, repetitive visuals that emphasize the artificiality of their world. Acting-wise, Imogen Poots delivers a strong performance, while Jesse Eisenberg brings his usual style, which sometimes works but occasionally feels forced. The real standout is the child actor, his unsettling presence adds a lot to the film’s eerie atmosphere. There’s a lot of subtlety in how he moves and reacts, making you wonder whether his voice was altered or dubbed over in post.

The script keeps things cryptic, and while that works for the tone, it also leaves some moments feeling underdeveloped. The lack of clear explanations may frustrate some viewers, but it’s clear that the movie is more about the experience than the answers. The sound design plays a big role in the tension, using unsettling audio cues to make certain scenes even more uncomfortable. Overall, Vivarium is a strange, thought-provoking film that raises more questions than it answers. If you like psychological horror with a heavy dose of surrealism, it’s worth a watch. Just don’t expect everything to make sense.

Vivarium - Official UK Trailer - On Digital Now

LIVING ROOM Q&As: Vivarium with Jesse Eisenberg, Imogen Poots and Lorcan Finnegan

Vivarium Official Trailer (2020) - Jesse Eisenberg, Imogen Poots

VIVARIUM clip | BFI London Film Festival 2019

Vivarium( 2019)

You're home. Forever.

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A review by SWITCH.

Written by SWITCH. on Wed Nov 20 2019

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