Vivarium (2019)

Full waste of time although I have a lot of free time due to lock down still this time could have been used for something else.

Fmovies: But then came the rest of the film. Tedious, repetitive, dull. I was SO glad when it was over. Ick.

The way this movie played out and ended felt very similar to a black mirror episode that felt like it's missing something.... there are a lot of great things in this movie (performance, cinematography, color scheme) but it doesn't make up for the one thing it lacks- excitement. Honestly watching this movie made me feel like I ate a big meal and I'm full from it but it wasn't what I was craving and overall bland. I have this feeling that the point of this movie is to make you feel like nothing. make you feel melancholy and/or depressed. It really makes you question your existence, your place on earth, if perfection is really what we crave and if life really matters, so it did achieve its goal however it probably could have been slightly more entertaining but then maybe it wouldn't have been as effective? It's a tough grey area. I probably wouldn't watch it again or recommend it to someone who's depressed. If you like unique artsy surreal films give it a go but don't expect too much. (Excuse my horrible grammar and spelling)

Vivarium fmovies. Got a half decent idea for a short tv episode (but hey... leave out the cuckoo opening scenes then, no need to spell out the whole thing beforehand) but as a feature it's just an amateurish mess without much thought, balance in it's storytelling or coherence behind it (and yes it is "surreal" but that doesn't make it any better)

Vivarium is a rather ingenious film about a young couple, excellently played by Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg, lured to a bland housing development by a salesman (a hilariously weird Jonathan Aris) where they are forced to raise a child. I really liked the first half, which is a visually striking, surreal existential drama that can be seen as a commentary on suburban life.

At first much of the movie is weirdly, darkly comical, but as it moves along the comical parts give way to despair and horror. This makes sense, and I think it's a reasonable direction for the movie to go based on its premise. But while the first half is *fun*, the second half is very much not, and that feels like a bit of a bait and switch.

The movie is also, at an hour and a half, too long. It's basically an extended Twilight Zone episode that takes one concept and explores it. There aren't really twists per se, we never learn much about this world, we just see how these people's lives unfold in this bizarre situation.

Ultimately I'm torn between rating this 6 or 7, since parts of it are quite good. But while I was fascinated early on, by the end I was just kinda bummed out.