Vivarium (2019)

(On Cable TV, July 2020) It’s not that Vivarium is entirely without promise—as the film starts, it quickly creates the off-kilter dreamlike aesthetics it’s going for, and gets its narrative going by trapping a young couple in a house where they’re asked to raise a child delivered to their door, along with all the necessities of life. But what could have been an interesting short feature soon turns into a repetitive, irritating blob. The eerie suburban satire turns into pointless SF tragedy with the kind of cyclical ending that puts off audiences and makes them ask why the film even existed in the first place. Creepy from the start and then even progressively creepier as it advances, Vivarium is not a film aiming for a happy ending (or even much of an ending), practically begging viewers to dislike the result. Jesse Eisenberg isn’t bad as the male lead, but Imogen Poots gets the much better role here as the film’s true protagonist. Despite a budget that occasionally shows its seams, there’s some visual style here, even with cheap but consistent special effects. While Vivarium wants to be surprising, viewers with the fortitude to make it to the end will only see a circular narrative that feels both trite and stretched-out: no character development, no happiness, no enlightenment, just Sisyphus-like futility with a different cast.