Vivarium is currently available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, and Vudu. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Feeling trapped, claustrophobic, frustrated and/or confused as you ride out the coronavirus in the confines of your own home? Well, the plight of Gemma and Tom, the young couple under the microscope in the new sci-fi drama Vivarium, just might make you feel not quite so bad. On the other hand, depending on your filmmaking tastes, Vivarium may very well add to your tedium and torture. Sweet teacher Gemma (Imogen Poots) and her chill handyman/gardener boyfriend Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) find themselves trapped in Yonder, a supposedly ideal and idyllic community. Their car runs out of gas. Phones can’t muster a signal. Worse, Yonder is desolate: no people around, no cars, no noise, no wind, only endless row after row of impersonable, identical green houses and, in the sky, perfect, puffy cotton-candy clouds. Somehow, though, food appears. And, stranger still, so does a box containing a baby boy that will grow up at a super-accelerated rate and drive Gemma and Tom -- and you -- crazy by constantly mimicking his parents and screeching at ear-piercing decibels until he gets what he desires. [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/07/30/vivarium-clip-1] Directed by Lorcan Finnegan and written by Garret Shanley based on a story by the two of them, Vivarium treads mighty familiar ground and examines oft-examined themes, all to diminishing returns. That familiar ground spans from The Twilight Zone, The Prisoner and The Stepford Wives to The Village of the Damned, The Truman Show and Black Mirror. As for the themes? The suburbs suck. Check. Parenting is tough. Got it. Unfortunately, despite some memorable moments, solid performances, colorful production design, eye-pleasing surreal imagery, and sardonic humor, Vivarium never gels. We feel for Emma and Tom, but actually caring about them would yield more dramatic heft, and Finnegan and Shanley don’t give us nearly enough of them together operating as a tandem to either understand or escape their situation. Emma does her thing and Tom does his, and more often than not, never the twain shall meet. And that’s a shame because Eisenberg and especially Poots are so good here, having already shared the screen in both Solitary Man and The Art of Self-Defense. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=10-best-free-movies-to-watch-online&captions=true"] The character of The Boy grows increasingly, aggressively annoying rather than evolving into a genuine threat. Compounding the issues, Vivarium unfolds at a glacial pace and poses existential questions it mostly fails to answer. I say mostly because Finnegan absolutely sticks the landing; the final 10 minutes provide legitimate narrative – if not emotional – closure. Oh, and for those who take any interest in Vivarium, Google the meaning of the film’s title.
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