Unfortunately there's not enough substance here to fill up an entire feature film. There's A LOT of padding. For example the scene where they're listening to ska music in the car. It doesn't add anything much to the movie. It feels like the actors were told to just make up a dialogue on the spot.

For a movie of this kind to sustain our attention for a full hour and a half there needs to be more than just the initial concept. Unfortunatley there's not. There's no twist. There's no second act. There's a really interesting "nightmare"-type scene towards the end which feels for a moment like the movie's finally going somewhere. But then it dissipates and we're left with nothing much once more.

Why didn't the protagonists try and decipher the book that was delivered? Surely that was a vital clue? What caused their health to fail? Why didn't they try breaking into other houses on the street? I wanted these characters to fight to the death but they really went out with a wimper.

Could have been great.... but wasn't. Watch "the Platform" instead if you want surreal horror with a message.

Though 'Vivarium (2019)' isn't necessarily a bad in-the-moment viewing experience, it ultimately emerges as a frustrating and almost pointless endeavour. It requires a lot of patience, as most slow-burning things do, but it doesn't reward that patience with anything other than its end credits. Most obviously, the movie is an incredibly cynical and downbeat allegory for the cyclical nature of - I suppose - 'typical' suburban life. It basically posits that life is nothing but a prison (cheerful, I know). The problem is that its metaphor falls short in a few key areas, most notably in how it connects itself to the 'true' surface-level aspects of the story. The actual machinations of its plot are so poorly defined that they lack any real relevance. Plus, in the real world, there's this little thing called happiness, which the flick seems to forget. Of course, movies are allowed to be dark. It's just that they ought to amount to something, to use their darkness as a way to frighten or provoke. Rather than using its nihilism to create fear, the piece just puts it on display. The actual story keeps going in circles. There aren't many twists on the central situation. Even when something new does crop up, the picture tends to bat its ideas aside in an effort to create an increasingly hopeless vibe. Essentially, it's plagued by long stretches where 'nothing' happens. Now, you could argue that's the point: its leads are stuck in infinite suburbia, after all. Just because the characters are bored, though, doesn't mean the audience has to be. The narrative is elusive and strange, an odd mixture of the mundane and the otherworldly, but it isn't intriguing. It really should be, too. The movie's premise and, even, some of its plot points have a lot of potential. That's why it's so frustrating that the whole thing just feels like a waste of time. It's well-made and, as I mentioned, it can hold your attention, but it's the sort of thing you almost regret giving your attention to. There's not much else to say, really. It's just not that good. Oh, and it features one of the most annoying children ever put to screen (through no fault of the actor); he's not freaky or unsettling, he's just plain irritating. 4/10

I remember seeing a review for this scary movie by Mark Kermode, and it looked and sounded worthwhile and interesting from clips and positive reviews I read, I was definitely up for something creepy or weird. Basically, Gemma (Imogen Poots, also producing),a primary school teacher, and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg, also producing),a handyman, are girlfriend and boyfriend. They are looking into buying a house and meet with a real estate agent. The agent, Martin (Jonathan Aris),is very strange and off-putting. Nonetheless, they follow him to a new, mysterious, peculiar suburban development called Yonder, filled with dozens of identical houses. The couple are shown around house number 9. Martin asks if they have children, Gemma replies, "No, not yet", and he freaks them out by mimicking her perfectly. After looking around the garden, Gemma and Tom re-enter the house to find that Martin has vanished. They attempt to leave, but find themselves going in circles, repeatedly returning to number 9. They drive around the endless identical streets until they run out of petrol. Out of options, they sleep in the house. The next morning, they try to escape on foot, but consistently return to number 9. Eventually they give up and find a box full of tasteless vacuum-packed food left in front of the house. In desperation, Tom sets fire to the house, and they sleep on the pavement. The following morning, they find another box has been left for them. This time it contains a baby boy (Côme Thiry) with a message, saying "Raise the child and be released." When the smoke has cleared, they are shocked to see the house undamaged. 98 days later, the infant has grown fast into a young boy (Senan Jennings). This child is a mutant; like Martin it mimics Tom and Gemma and screams whenever it wants feeding. Gemma and Tom sit together in the garden with a pickaxe, waiting to attack whoever delivers and collects the food, but they never see anyone. Tom starts digging a hole in the garden, thinking it may lead somewhere, and becomes withdrawn. In the living room, the Boy watches the television, which broadcasts bizarre black-and-white fractal-like patterns. Tom comes to believe if the Boy dies, someone might come for the body, and they could force whoever it is to free them. He locks it in their car, intending to starve it, but Gemma takes pity and releases it. One day the Boy goes missing and returns with a book full of strange symbols and images of humanoids with throat sacs. When Gemma asks him to mimic the person who gave him the book, he makes strange, rasping sounds and inflates his throat sacs. Soon the Boy has matured to resemble a young adult (Éanna Hardwicke). Tom and Gemma avoid him where possible as Tom continues the endless digging and becomes sick. The Boy leaves during the day, and Gemma tries to follow him, but always finds herself back at number 9. Finally, after some time, Tom finds a body in a vacuum bag at the bottom of the pit. The Boy locks Gemma and Tom out of the house, forcing them to sleep in the car. When Tom's condition gets worse, Gemma pleads with the Boy for medicine for Tom, but he replies, "Maybe it's time he was released." When Tom dies in Gemma's arms, the Boy zips him into a vacuum bag and throws it into the deep hole that was dug. After another night locked out, Gemma ambushes the Boy with the pickaxe, but only manages to wound him. The creature hisses and crawls into a labyrinth under the pavement. Gemma follows it and crashes through the door into multiple rooms in other houses with more Boys and several strangers, one of whom has died by suicide. She lands back in number 9, weak and moaning. The Boy is cleaning the house. He carries her to a vacuum bag and explains that mothers die after raising their sons. Gemma says she is not his mother, and dies as he zips her in. The Boy buries her with Tom and fills the hole, which then disappears. After filling the car with petrol, he drives back to the estate office, where an aged Martin lies dying in his chair. Martin gives his nametag to The Boy and then expires, having finished his lifecycle. The Boy puts Martin in a vacuum bag, folds it up, and puts it into a file drawer. He sits down in the chair and waits. Then a couple enter the real estate agent office, the Boy stands to greet them the same way Martin did, meaning that similar events will repeat, and they will presumably they will suffer the same fate. The word vivarium is defined as "an enclosure, container, or structure adapted or prepared for keeping animals under seminatural conditions for observation or study or as pets, and that is exactly what the characters end up experiencing. Poots and Eisenberg give equally good performances as the millennial couple trapped in a neighbourhood nightmare with the creepy mutant humanoid, and Aris being the oddball estate agent is enough to indicate the strangeness to come. The unending labyrinth of carbon-copy sickly green houses are unsettling, claustrophobia, paranoia and despair resonate throughout this dark satirical story, the monstrous mutant boy/young man is terrifying, the sound and music are great, and you are gripped by the psychology mind-bending tone, a bizarre but inventive, splendidly eerie, and watchable science-fiction horror. Very good!