Parenthood can be a drag.
Vivarium aims to be a creepy sci-fi puzzle box, but unfortunately there isn’t much to be puzzled out. The film features Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg as a young couple who get trapped in a purgatory-like housing development, tasked with raising a “baby” to adulthood in order to earn their release. The “child” is alien in its behavior and grows at a much faster pace than a human baby would. As expected, the tension of their situation has their relationship at its breaking point as they struggle to find any joy in their monotonous isolation and contend with their demanding and discomfiting little roommate. The central theme of the movie is obvious from the harrowing opening sequence of a cuckoo usurping the place of another species’ children in their nest. By the end of the first act, it’s clear that we are watching a similar story of an invasive species forcing the protagonists to raise their young, in this case, presumably, so the foreign entity can learn to fit in with humans. Since we understand early on what story Vivarium is telling, there is no overarching mystery to solve. We may not know the exact path it will take, the specifics of the alien life-form’s development or precisely what doomed-to-fail tactics the central pair will attempt in order to escape their ordeal, but we know where it is going to end up. That means, without the hook of that central mystery, the success of the film lies on the effectiveness of the atmosphere created and the strength of the central performances. To their credit, the filmmakers certainly achieve a level of creepiness that is befitting a horror movie. They include plenty of clever details like the bizarre static the boy wordlessly watches on the tv each night, or the way he practices speech by flawlessly imitating his surrogate parents in an unintentionally mocking manner. The oppressive despair is palpable as the days wear on, indistinguishable from each other except for the rapid aging of the “child”. Creepy isn’t the same as scary, though, and nothing in the story proper tops the horror of that (biologically accurate) opening with the cuckoo bird.
Even without a mystery or scares, this type of movie can work as a character study of sorts. With strong enough central performances you could end up with a high concept dissection about how parenthood impacts a marriage. That’s a lot to put on the script and the actors, though, and neither party is quite up to the task. Jesse Eisenberg is outstanding when he is cast in a part that plays to his strengths (Woody Harrelson’s nebbish foil in the zombie apocalypse; social-media mogul/dispassionate robot Mark Zuckerberg), but he doesn’t bring much to his turn as the cynical husband of Imogen Poots. Poots fares better in a role that allows her to explore the character’s conflicting instincts to parent her ward and to recoil from it with disgust, but it isn’t enough to save the film. Overall, I admire a lot about Vivarium, and I can’t claim it to be poorly made, but I also can’t say I had much fun while I watched it. I feel like it missed an opportunity to go full-on horror, or full-on mind-melting science fiction, or even lean into arty metaphor about familial relationships. Instead, it kind of flirts with each of those directions without ever truly picking a lane. It did make me fucking terrified of cuckoo birds, though.
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