Better Never Than Late on "Vivarium"

After seeing, and quite thoroughly enjoying "Backrooms", I have been on the search for movies with a similar vibe. One movie that kept popping up on some lists related to my search was "Vivarium". I had never heard of it, but it had Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg. That was more than enough for me. But, if it was anything like "Backrooms", I figured I was in for a treat. I found it streaming on Vizion On Demand for free and turned it on yesterday.

Before I get fully into my review, the movie does have a similar feel as "Backrooms". It is creepy and sinister and dark and slow in certain parts. But that is pretty much where the similarities end. While this movie has a good idea and good actors attached, it is nowhere near the level of "Backrooms". I found the movie to be weird for the sake of weird, and way more boring than anything else. Eisenberg and Poots are up to the task in their roles, but the writing and direction feels slightly lacking in my opinion.

The whole idea of the movie centers around Poots and Eisenberg, a young couple, looking for a new place to live together. They want to start a life with one another and they figure the first step is getting an apartment together. They can't find anything until one day when they stumble into an office building that is selling homes in a new and upcoming developmental neighborhood. The person working at the office building is weird and pushy, but he is intent on getting this young couple to look at one of the homes. He gets them there, shows them around, mimics Poot's character very weirdly and all of the sudden disappears. The couple cannot find a way out of the development, and they keep ending up back at the home, number 9. Every house looks the same, the roads look the same and no one else seems to live there. They try to follow the sun to get out, they write on the roof of the home for help, they try to dig their way out, they even try to burn the home down. Nothing works, and all the worse, the home is unaffected by whatever they do to it. They wake up one day to a baby and a note. The note tells them to take care of the baby and they will be released. The kid is a nightmare and forces the couple to grow to resent one another. Eisenberg becomes obsessed with his hole, Poots tries to play mom and the kid just gets worse and worse.

This all feels like a well thought out idea, but the movie tends to go off the rails far too much. The kid is loud and obnoxious, but never really scary. Eisenberg and Poots do their best to show this couple growing apart, but it was easy to see this coming from the start. The effects and underworld they created for this movie are fine, but you can see this in any other sci-fi movie. And the biggest discrepancy for me, the movie is never all that scary. "Backrooms" did a great job of making us feel like we were living in the space created for the movie. It was creepy and unsettling. The music was perfect for the atmosphere they created. The actors knocked it out of the park. "Vivarium" tried their best to do this before "Backrooms", but it wasn't the same. I wonder if I had seen this before "Backrooms" would I have a different feeling? But that is not the case, and I'm going to be comparing a lot of sci-fi psychological thrillers to "Backrooms" from here on out. I would like to point out that I did think Imogen Poots did prove that she can be a leading actor in movies moving forward. She did a very good job with less than stellar direction and writing to work with in this movie. And sometimes, being weird just to be weird doesn't always work out. The movie just kind of ended and it felt hollow to me. I tried to read a bunch of stuff to wrap my head around it, but everyone has a different theory and they are all over the place.

If you liked "Backrooms" I'd say skip "Vivarium". It just didn't work all that well for me, and it is nowhere near the level of other really good sci-fi movies in my opinion.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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