Vivarium is the third film by Garret Shanley (writer) and Lorcan Finnegan (director). The mystery sci-fi is an exciting trip into the warped suburbia of Yonder, with an impressive cast (Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg) and soundtrack.
As young couple Gemma and Tom go house hunting, an agent leads them to a pristine urban development. During a house tour, the agent disappears, leaving the couple to learn they’re trapped within the labyrinth streets of the empty town.
Surreal and haunting, the winding roads and carbon-copy green houses are a fantastic set. Its neatness turns the commercial edge of the suburbs into a barren dystopia. And as the characters face the challenge of raising a child – their only means of escape – it’s only fitting for the child to hold that same unnerving hostility.
The whole concept of the Vivarium (an enclosure that mimics natural conditions, for observation) sits at the heart of the story. As the child closely inspects and reproduces the nuances of human behaviour, the audience learns that he is incapable of an imagination, and the parasitic nature of the child is revealed.
The film has some great moments, and handles surreality with an inviting aesthetic; there’s one scene towards the end that particularly stood out, with a foot in the door of absurdist surrealism. The film balances on a fine line between mystery and exposition; there is a lot left to interpretation and intuition. There are moments where the stakes didn’t seem clear enough for us to feel high tension.
And without an expository ending, the tragedy does feel a little unresolved. Although this isn’t to say the film didn’t succeed in offering the audience a fascinating dystopian journey into Yonder. The characters had great chemistry, and you suffer with them through their many trips of bad luck.
The script is authentic, showing a stark contrast between the humanity in the characters and the superficial world they’re enclosed in; which is captured nicely in Gemma’s realisation that all the clouds in Yonder are strangely shaped exactly like clouds.
The dystopia is grounded in musings of the way contemporary society values home ownership; a fairy tale laced with financial debt and loss. The director states “the social contract is a strange and invisible agreement that we flutter towards like moths to a flame”, and as he enters this discussion of how commercial and personal worlds might collide, the sci-fi genre offers a fitting lens for comparing these ideas of perfection and imperfection. It’s definitely worth a watch.
Vivarium launched last 16 April on Google Play, iTunes, Fetch and Umbrella Entertainment and will be available via Foxtel’s On Demand service from May 6.