Vivarium

Hello, City. It's your killer host! My name is Parker, your resident horror fanatic. And just like last week, it's me again, Ryden Sola, reviewing a new release for us to enjoy in these quarantine times. So welcome to my favorite scary movie. What's your favorite scary movie is a horror film podcast where we're on a journey to find our favorite scary movie one at a time. Whether you hate them or love them, join us and discover yours. Spoilers ahead, so plan your movie screening every weekend before the episode release. Welcome, welcome, welcome. As stated in the intro, again this week it is just me. Like I said last week, because of these trying times, our schedule is a little up in the air.

All three of us have had to move homes. But now we're getting settled, so hopefully, before too long, we will be back to a more regular schedule for you guys. But for now, I wanted to make sure and keep getting stuff out so that we can all enjoy each other's company during our quarantines. This week I am looking at a new VOD release that came out the weekend before last called Vivarium. This is obviously a 2020 release, as I just said, it just came out. And um, in case you did not know, because I didn't, and I looked it up after watching the movie, vivarium means an enclosure, container, or structure adapted or prepared for keeping animals under semi-natural conditions for observation or study.

That definition is from Siri. Um, that makes a lot of sense, and if you already know it, vivarium means a little bit of a spoiler for what this movie was about. I personally went in not knowing a lick about this bad boy. I hadn't read a synopsis, I hadn't seen a trailer, I just saw it was out and thought that looks interesting. It was described as a horror film, as we might discuss. Again, that might be questionable, but as I say time and time again, horror is fluid. What does it mean? I don't know. It's up to interpretation, and I do think there are some horrific moments in this movie that we'll get to talking about later.

Vivarium was directed by Lorcan Finnegan. This is his second feature after a 2016 film called Without Name. He wrote this with his writing partner Garrett Shanley, who wrote Without Name with him. Vivarium stars Imogen Poots as Jemma. You might recognize her from 28 Days Later in 2007, Green Room in 2015, which is a good movie, but I had a really rough time watching. Uh, so props to anyone who can manage to stomach that bad boy. And obviously, our favorite movie of all time, Black Christmas from 2019. And in case you cannot detect the sarcasm, just head back and listen to our review of that film uh from last year. This film also stars Jesse Eisenberg as Tom.

His horror credits include West Craven's Curse from 2005 and the Zombieland films, uh, which I have not seen the second double tap, and I'm dying to, so hopefully I get to that soon. The Rotten Tomatoes critic score for Vivarium is a 69% noise, and the audience score is a 37%. These scores are both as of April 4th, so they may have changed by the time you hear this. The critics consensus states Vivarium may confound almost as often as it intrigues, but this well-acted sci-fi horror hybrid has interesting ideas and explores them with style. Obviously, this is a new release, so it is my first watch of this film. I had not seen it before. It is available on VOD to rent for, I believe,$6.99 everywhere, which is, you know, not the cheapest compared to other rentals, but with the new slew of rentals coming out with uh theater shutdowns, it is much better than$20.

So that also kind of swayed me towards this one. I highly encourage you go watch this before listening to this episode because it has a few shocking things. Nothing that blew my mind, but things that I was like, uh, what? This is bizarre. And uh I think it really helps to have that surprise preserved for your first watch. So if you haven't, go watch Vivarium and then come back and check back in with me here. My first reaction after watching this movie, first of all, was that was bizarre. As I just said, some really uh mouth-agape things happened. I was texting my friend Julianne, which you'll remember from our discussion of the hunt, or if a certain movie from A24 ever comes out that we've already recorded an episode on, uh, you'll hear her again there.

But I was texting her and she's like, should I watch it? And I was like, uh, it's fine. I'm 20 minutes in. If anything crazy happens, I'll let you know. And the second I sent that, we got a baby in a cardboard box outside of a house, and I was like, Well, you know, the my wish is this movie's command because it's happening now. Uh besides that, I think this movie is really gorgeous. Uh there are a few scenes that really utilize color beautifully. I'm thinking specifically of the scene towards the end when Jimma and Tom are laying on the sidewalk with his uh final breaths, and there's like yellows and pinks and blues all kind of combining on their faces.

The color and the lighting is gorgeous, a lot of sunsets, and um obviously this whole fabricated environment with the little puffy cotton ball clouds and the endless uh houses in this development. I think that it has this beautiful contrast to the beginning of the film, which is in the real world, and even that opening credits sequence, as disgusting as those little hairless chicken birds are, uh, the colors are so stark and contrasting that it's really beautiful. Uh, I also think that the performances from Imogen Poots uh and Jesse Eisenberg, but specifically Imogen Poots, are pretty phenomenal. And this movie, if it didn't have sympathetic performances like that, I think would be a lot tougher to enjoy because they just have such a relatable aspect to them that these characters, while they are kind of every man characters, or I would say every young man, I think this is a movie for young people and the fears of young people, maybe uh older generations that, you know, lived this kind of Amer I know this movie is not American, but American dream of uh, you know, settling a house and upward mobility.

I might not be able to relate to this as much, but I think that Imogene Poots and Jesse Eisenberg's ability to kind of capture a um I just keep saying it, but sympathy uh for their anxieties and their ultimate deterioration in this film is pretty incredible, even as such bizarre alien foreign things are happening to them. And finally, I would just say that I think like I said earlier, horror is a flexible word, and this movie is horror in some aspects, but I would say broadly more sci-fi or just you know, more generally genre, there is, you know, something that is outside the box of reality happening here, and there are some f things that I fear happening in here, but I would say if you're in the mood for something really scary or slasher or gory or uh s uh well, this movie is psychological, but it's not really psychologically harrowing, then Vivarium might not be for you, but if you're in the mood for something just strange and outlandish, then this movie I think is really successful.

Alright, with the first reaction out of the way, I've composed a bit of a summary for the entire movie. And bear with me, it's a little lengthy, but I think that there are quite a few points in this movie that need to be hit to kind of get the gist of what's going on and be able to discuss it fully. Uh, this movie is not really a predict what's going to happen type movie, at least it wasn't for me, even though I'm always bad at that. But um, it's more of just watching things unfold and being kind of like, oh, interesting as they happen. So just follow along with me on that thread. So after the opening credits, which play over those horrifying images of the baby birds being fed, mothers, am I right?

They might come back. We are introduced to Gemma, a school teacher, and her BF Tom, a handyman. As a lady passing by luckily informs us watching, they're looking for a home. Unlucky for Tom and Jimma, they go hunting at yonder, a new housing development. A strange realtor named Martin shows them a unit and is hilarious, but they don't seem to think so. They clearly just don't understand each other's humor. While touring the home, Martin mysteriously disappears and Gemma and Tom find the situation increasingly unfunny as they discover that they can't navigate their way out of yonder. After running out of gas, they make a sensible decision to follow the sun, but end up right back at their unit.

I think it's important to note that they do make a few smart decisions trying to get out of this place because then you can't make those arguments of like, oh, you know, they're such idiots. I would never be in this situation. I think the point is is that we would all be in this situation, this pickle if we found ourselves there. The next morning, they discover a box of groceries out front, and honestly, I was all in for small inclusive living. I would love that right now. Tom is not though, and he sets the house on fire, including the groceries, you dumbo. The next morning the house is magically unharmed, and in a turn that uh made me gasp, as I said earlier, a baby is in the new box out front with a note that says to raise it and they'll be released.

Time jump. This baby is now a young boy, and he is definitely not normal. He has a strange dubbed voice and takes to imitating his parents' arguments. A very smart way, I thought, of telling the audience that uh of what we missed in the time jump. There must be some way out of here. Everywhere has a way out of here. Yeah, well maybe Jeb, if you didn't say no to every other goddamn house we looked at, we wouldn't have ended up here. So I wasn't my fault. Sorry, Jeb. This place is making me crazy. And then he also shrieks for long periods of time until he's fed the same. While putting out a cigarette in the grass later, Tom discovers through some pretty fun stop-motion effects that there's a little uh dirt underneath the grass and has the idea to start digging a hole.

Later that night, while Jimma and Tom are boning, the boy watches. NOISE! The next day, after a lot of digging, Gemma and Tom have a dance party and the boy joins in. He accidentally trips Tom, who in turn picks the boy up and slams him on the pavement. I think this is where the characters really start making a turn. Gemma becomes maternal and protects and bonds with the boy, while Tom becomes obsessed with his whole same. Even though it begins driving him and Gemma apart. One day the boy disappears. When he returns, he has a strange book that shows a man with a bulging frog-like throat. He tells Gemma he met a stranger, and when she tricks him into imitating the person he met so that she can get a little more intel, he starts making guttural animal noises and his throat flares out.

It was scary. Time jump. Now the boy is a man, and Tom has uh somehow become sick. Maybe it's lung cancer from all those cigarettes. He finds a body in the hole, by the end we assume it's their predecessor, and after he crawls out begins to die, apparently. The man won't help, but he and Jimma have a very sweet moment recalling how they met. After body bagging Tom and dumping him in the hole he dug, Jimma attacks the man with a pickaxe. He turns into a scary animal man and literally lifts up the sidewalk and crawls in. Jimma follows him into the ground. Now this is where I legitimately have no clue what's happening. She sees a woman crying, some people fucking, and another version of the boy, and it's all in these monochrome colors.

Uh, and then she, you know, falls back into her real world. She is afterwards struggling to walk, and we hear the man telling her that all she was meant to be was a mother. And of course, what do mothers do? They die. She says all they wanted was a home, and he tells her she is home and dumps her into the hole, and then goes about tidying everything up at the home. Then the man fuels up his car, not his car, but Jim and Tom's car, and drives into town. Martin, the original salesman, is dying at his desk at yonder sales room, and with his final breath, passes the man his name tag. The man, now Martin, literally crunches old Martin up into a file cabinet and then attends to a new couple coming in to inquire about a home.

And uh, you know, the end, they all live happily ever after. Probably not, but you know, what are you gonna do? Now, the scenes that I specifically want to hit on on this podcast because it is a horror podcast, are the uh scenes that I deem the horror scenes, air quotes. The first one is when Jimma and the boy are sitting in the living room uh while after he's watched TV, and uh she says, Let's play a game, and she's trying to trick him into giving more information uh about the stranger he says he met while he had disappeared that day. So she's like he his whole deal is imitating them. And so she's like, Imitate me, now imitate Tom, good, imitate a dog, woof, woof, woof, uh, and now imitate the stranger.

And when she tells him to imitate the stranger, like I said in the summary, his throat flares out and he starts making these really disgusting noises. Obviously, that freaks Jim out. When I watched this, I actually, for the first time watching this movie, was a little jarred and was like, ugh, like I don't like that. I definitely would not want a child doing that to me. I was reading an article on Collider where the author had interviewed uh Finnegan, the director, and he said that this throat flaring thing was inspired by Magpies, the bird, after he and the writer had watched a documentary on the cuckoo. I think that makes a lot of sense, and I don't know a ton about birds, and so I'm wondering if there's a further significance to that, uh, that the author just didn't get to in this article, or if there is um if that's just an aesthetic choice.

Obviously, the beginning starts with birds nesting and mothers feeding the children, and the children, I think more importantly, taking and then, you know, after the credits, they find the dead birds in the grass. And whether those birds are the children or the parents, you know, I don't really know. But I think that would be the only significance I could glean from the movie. The author or the director also described yonder as a fungus that can pop up from the ground anywhere and appears as something attractive, but is actually parasitic. And I thought that was really interesting and can get into the uh themes that I'll discuss later about, you know, desire and this um I said it earlier, American Dream.

That's just because I'm American. This film was all uh actually a an international co-production between Ireland, Denmark, and Belgium, which I read on Wikipedia, but also was pretty easy to pick up with the opening credits of the production companies and the grants that this movie had at the beginning. So, Wikipedia, you got nothing on me. And then the other scene that I thought was interesting as a horror film scene was when the man crawls under the sidewalk and Jimma follows him. Not only is this kind of the first moment that we get some like gore fighting because she swings a pickaxe at him and knocks him in the face, but then you know, he's in this weird animalistic crawl that this whole movie has this uncanny thing where the houses are just just slightly off what's natural and the man is just off, and really the only things grounding us to our known human reality in this film are Gemma and Tom.

And again, I think that strongly is influenced by the performances, as I said earlier. But she follows him under the sidewalk and is thrown into these weird dimensions, you know, and these different colors. I believe there's a dark blue and a red and a green. Not a green, because the green is what she's in, so I can't remember the other color, but I think there's one more color. Um and the director described this as uh multiple realities. He said that the people who control yonder, these beings, uh, also control time, which allows them to create the infinite time loop that uh Jimma and Tom are trapped inside. And this also can control infinite realities, he says, vibrating side by side with each other.

And so this further gets into that sci-fi element. And I found this kind of fascinating, and you know, that can go into a larger picture of you know, decisions and what happens, you know, if I were to make this other decision than the one I actually made, and doubt and anxiety around the future that I think this movie hits on a lot. So going off of that, uh something that we're all dealing with right now that this movie also deals with is isolation. That is something that not many of us expected to be forced into at the moment, but you know, many of us are finding ourselves. And I personally live in New York City, so I've been in my apartment, just me and my cat for, you know, two or three weeks now, with you know, my daily walks and whatnot, but it's become kind of a source of anxiety and yonder having this infinite not only reality of time, but also the houses repeating one after the other and the prospect of, you know, however many days they've been there and time is just at a standstill.

They don't even have Wi-Fi or internet. I don't know what I'd do without Netflix or being able to uh not rent movies like Vivarium. But um that kind of anxiety being alone and having no exit or no way of getting out. The other thing that I think this movie plays on in terms of fear, the paranoia of uncertainty in the future. Like I said, I think this movie is kind of playing more on the fears of uh younger generations. And do we pick what um generations before us have picked? Jimma and Tom say they want a home, but you know, and I know that there are more sit circumstances than this, but in the end they got one.

And look what happened to them. At the beginning, Jimma says that she wants children someday. She got one and She even makes an effort throughout the movie to be a mother to the boy. And uh, you know, look where that got her too. In the end, he basically just kills her and is just like, you did your job, you raised me, now you're done. What else are you going to be? And so this idea that what we want might not actually be in the end what we want is pretty terrifying to me. You know, I'm younger as well. I'm 24. I'm just beginning my own, you know, career, and I'm living on my own now and paying my bills, but like I have this, you know, job and I'll have this job for a long time.

And what if by the end of my life I regret that? And Jimma and Tom are having that same uh, you know, conundrum that they're stuck in. And by the end of their lives, I bet they do regret, you know, the path that they've taken. Now, I don't know about you guys, and I won't be giving any spoilers, but I am obsessed with Westworld. And season three right now is kind of hitting on some similar themes. Uh, the big tagline is free will is not free. And there's this concept in the third season that the world has become a place where higher powers have dictated what your future will be and what you're allowed to achieve, and that's all that you can achieve.

So, on the flip side of what I just talked about about not knowing what you want and regretting it, I think that you could also interpret this movie as um everyone having their own role and being placed in that role and then not being able to escape it. You know, uh, I keep returning to this American dream thing. I'm sorry. That's just kind of the buzzword I'm using that I think is felt, you know, more globally than just America, but this desire for upward mobility and being able to achieve more than what you are born into, you know, that's something that has risen with social media influencers and you know, Justin Bieber on YouTube, you know, being, you know, some boy from Canada who's now a huge pop star, and I have no idea what's going on with him anymore.

But this idea that everyone is just searching for how to get more and reality TV, you know, can you get onto a competition show and win a hundred thousand dollars or whatever? That's what everybody's seeking and searching for. But this movie, I think, can be interpreted as saying that you'll never achieve more than what you're searching for because the system that's in place in our world has set us back to a place where we cannot achieve that. Uh, something that I enjoyed was that Jimma and Tom are not these crazy caricature characters being forced into this like 50s Stepford wife um, you know, archetypes. Uh, I think a less smart movie might have like these like, you know, crazy, rebellious, maybe like punk, you know, peer, statued, you know, I don't know, extreme people, and then they get here and they force them to wear like neutral clothes and you know cook food and you know, I'm bringing home the bacon or whatever people from like the 50s, Stepford Wife.

I love Nicole Kidman, so that movie keeps popping into my head. Society would be. I think that it's much smarter to have people that we're all like, where it's like, oh, maybe I do want to be a have a house, maybe I do want to be a mom, but instead you're forced into you can only be a mom, you can only have this house. And I think that's where the fear starts coming in. I also think that it's interesting that in the end, this kind of loop of uh trap being trapped by your circumstance even applies to the people running the show. So Martin, he's a salesman, apparently I mean, I'm assuming there are higher ups than him, but he's kind of the most senior figure that we see in this operation, and he's just there to perpetuate his own um loop himself.

He gets people to go to yonder, he traps them there, he has them raise a new uh person who then replaces him as the salesman for yonder. So I think this movie is really bleak in the end, in that it not only is like we, the people, the people at the bottom are trapped in our circumstances, but the people at the top are perpetuating their circumstance as well, and everybody's just trapped in this loop of expectation. Uh, I think that is terrifying. In the same interview with uh Collider, the director Finnegan said, quote, we started thinking about the itemization of society, the separation of community from the natural world and the loss of actual community altogether.

People feeling isolated and sort of trapped in these social contracts and actual contracts with banks. And I think that kind of hits on both of these interpretations that I've hit on. The first interpretation about being afraid of what your choices might bring about at the end of your life. That's something that I kind of picked up from what I'd read about Finnegan saying. But the second one uh about not being able to escape your circumstances, one that I was thinking about more, because I think that is more of a something that is stressful for me or a younger group, you know, who is trying to find more, especially me living in New York City, trying to pay my bills in a, you know, place where the rent is so expensive, and who, you know, I have a job, but maybe I want to do more than that job.

You know, I have this podcast because it's something that I love doing, but obviously you gotta have other things that pay the bills. So I think that this movie really smartly taps into the psychology and anxiety surrounding all of these things. Even if, like I said, it doesn't feel like necessarily a horror film like I was expecting it to, I think that there's a lot of psychological uh fear being capitalized on here. This film doesn't necessarily have any exciting murders, but as far as the most memorable moment, I would say the moment that they open the box outside of the house and there is a baby inside of it. I seriously was just kind of watching this movie, like, yeah, this is interesting, cool, whatever.

Um, and then the second that happened, I was like, oh shit, I am ready to see. And I that was like 20, 25 minutes into the movie. There was still over an hour left. I was like, what's gonna happen now? So for me, I think that is the most memorable moment because that really kickstarts my interest, and uh, I became really intrigued with what could happen in this movie. Now, on a scary scale, one to one to five, I I'm going to seriously give this movie a zero. I know I always say zeros are reserved for like rom-coms, but I think that there is nothing scary in this movie, and I would recommend anyone in the world could watch this movie.

I think that it's more intriguing and interesting and bizarre instead of scary. Now, playing a little game of smash or slash, I definitely would give this movie a smash. I was really intrigued. Again, I like bizarre things that are kind of unexplainable and completely outside of reality, and this movie definitely served me that. If you're in the mood for a horror horror, then no, you're not gonna get that. This would be a slash for you. But for me personally, I was in the right mood, I was in the right place, it's a smash in my book. Finally, what's my favorite scary movie? It is not Vivarium, of the season two programming. My favorite scary movie is Scream 4.

Next time on this podcast, I am hoping and planning on the three of us, me, Caroline, and Ian, being back together. What we will be watching, you will have to stay tuned to find out because that is a TBD. But we'll have something planned and let you know soon so that you can plan your own movie screaming next week. While you're waiting for next week's episode, you should head on over to Apple Podcasts and leave us in a rating and a review because that would be so so helpful on helping us grow our community here. Here's one from chrbaker.mch uh and they gave us five stars and said, obsessed, this is by far one of my all-time favorite podcasts.

I have to admit, I was skeptical when I first started listening. The hosts are young, thank you, and were not around for the time periods that many of the movies they review come from. I worried that they would not be able to fully understand these films since so much about them is a direct reflection of the period. I could not have been more wrong. All three hosts are incredibly insightful. They just seem to get it. I love all their perspectives, they have a lot of fun with the topic while they while still showing a lot of respect for the genre. I consider myself a horror aficionado, but I often listen to an episode and think, wow, I never thought about it that way.

Entertaining and enlightening. Oh my god, thank you so much, chrbaker.mch. And I love that you love our insights. I'm sorry that Caroline and Ian have been absent, but um I'm just going to tell myself that I'm your favorite because I'm sure that's true. All right, so we would love to hear from everyone else. So go leave that rating and review on Apple Podcasts. My name is Parker Heron, and you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Letterboxd in the slasher app at Parker Del Rey. I'd love for you to reach out and say hi. You can also find the podcast on social media, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at ScarymoviePod, where we'll post updates including what we're watching next week.

Uh, you can also find our website with our calendar, some written reviews, which we'll be back on soon. It's been a little slow since uh new releases have been canceled, but hopefully we'll have some new content on their ASAP. But you can find that at scarymoviepod.com. You can also reach out with any questions, suggestions, or um requests at Scarymoviepod at gmail dot com. All right, you guys, until next week, stay safe, stay healthy, and stay spooky.