‘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

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.

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.

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.

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.