Vivarium. (15.)
Directed by Lorcan Finnegan.
Starring Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Jonathan Aris, Eanna Hardwicke, Shana Hart, Senan Jennings. Available to stream on various platforms. 98 mins
This domestic sci-fi mystery begins with the most mundane of notions: a creepy, evil estate agent (Aris.) He escorts a young couple (Poots, Eisenberg) to see a starter home on a bland newbuilt out of town estate called Yonder. The problem is that though there is plenty of room in this Starter Home California, you can view it any time but can never leave. Once they are trapped there, they are presented with a rapidly growing male child to raise.
Finnegan's film is getting a bit of pummeling on the various online review aggregators which seems unfair. The film doesn't leave the viewer in much doubt about what is really happening to them – if the title doesn't give it away, the opening wildlife footage of cuckoos will. (It's very thoughtful to provide your own spoilers.) But, it's a decent enough little piece, the two central performances really get you to engage with their predicament and its atmosphere of stir-crazy confinement makes it inadvertently timely.
The problems are in execution and conception. This Irish/ Danish/ Belgium co-production doesn't have the budget to do it justice: the shots of the Yonder estate are so fake that it looks like the couple are being shown around a showreel of primitive mid-90s 3d computer animation. Beyond a nice creepy premise, there's no mystery to this mystery and no great insights. By the end all it leaves you with is estate agents are not human – and you may have suspected that already.
Directed by Lorcan Finnegan.
Starring Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Jonathan Aris, Eanna Hardwicke, Shana Hart, Senan Jennings. Available to stream on various platforms. 98 mins
This domestic sci-fi mystery begins with the most mundane of notions: a creepy, evil estate agent (Aris.) He escorts a young couple (Poots, Eisenberg) to see a starter home on a bland newbuilt out of town estate called Yonder. The problem is that though there is plenty of room in this Starter Home California, you can view it any time but can never leave. Once they are trapped there, they are presented with a rapidly growing male child to raise.
Finnegan's film is getting a bit of pummeling on the various online review aggregators which seems unfair. The film doesn't leave the viewer in much doubt about what is really happening to them – if the title doesn't give it away, the opening wildlife footage of cuckoos will. (It's very thoughtful to provide your own spoilers.) But, it's a decent enough little piece, the two central performances really get you to engage with their predicament and its atmosphere of stir-crazy confinement makes it inadvertently timely.
The problems are in execution and conception. This Irish/ Danish/ Belgium co-production doesn't have the budget to do it justice: the shots of the Yonder estate are so fake that it looks like the couple are being shown around a showreel of primitive mid-90s 3d computer animation. Beyond a nice creepy premise, there's no mystery to this mystery and no great insights. By the end all it leaves you with is estate agents are not human – and you may have suspected that already.
