Review: Vivarium

-
It's a forever home.

Gemma (Imogen Poots) and her boyfriend Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are looking at purchasing a house. They go to a property management office and meet a very strange man named Martin (Jonathan Aris) who takes them to view a development full of identical houses...then they find out they can't leave. They're stuck eating tasteless food, no matter where they run, they end up back at house # 9 and on top of that ,they receive a mysterious package with a live baby in it and the note "raise the child, and you can leave."

When I first saw the trailer for this, I was immediately sold on the creepy premise. And the film keeps that suspense up throughout. So much so that I wish they had expanded on it a bit more. Don't get me wrong, it's not completely ambiguous. It reminds me a bit of Ghost Story or Mother! These films do come full circle like this one does, but it still does leave some questions up in the air.

Imogen Poots really acts her ass off in this. I've always been a fan but she is doing the absolute most here. She has great chemistry with Jessen Eisenberg. He gets a bit less to do, and his character makes some puzzling choices, but I enjoyed him here too.

At 97 minutes, this film breezes by, even with the repetitive scenery, which looks fake in the best way possible. I know, we're used to heavily critiquing bad CGI or production design, but the artificial look this film has over all is absolutely perfect for the story.

Recommended: Yes

Grade: B-

Memorable Quote: "If they want it to live they'll come get it." - Tom (Jesse Eisenberg)

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by, let's talk movies!
(comments are moderated to reduce spam)

Popular posts from this blog

Random Ramblings: The Radio Flyer Conundrum

-
Image
Recently, I was talking to someone about who I thought were the best child actors when I was also a child.  Two that really stood out to me were Elijah Wood and Joseph Mazello, and one film those two were in together was called Radio Flyer.  Then I was reminded about the uniqueness of this film. Instead of reviewing the film, I wanted to have an open discussion about the ending. It deals with a tough issue; child abuse. What I’ve noticed is the way that the film ends is interpreted many different ways, and the filmmakers never came forward to say what was right and wrong. I’m interested in hearing everyone’s opinions on it. How did you interpret the ending? Obviously spoiler alerts will follow.. For those of you who haven’t seen the film, the basic premise is this: Two young boys, Mikey (Wood) and Bobby (Mazello) move in with their single mother and her boyfriend, who refers to himself as ‘The King’. It doesn’t take long for The King to start physically abusing Bobby, and the
Read more

Indie Gems: Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

-
Image
Passionate about your profession? I had never heard of this film until it ended up on one of Jason's favorite horror movie lists around Halloween. It immediately sounded interesting to me, so of course I threw it in my Netflix queue. (and if I'm just now watching it after adding it around Halloween, you know how ridiculous my queue is) Taylor (Angela Goethals) is a journalist who, along with a film crew decides to follow around a serial killer named Leslie Vernon. (Nathan Baesel) He plans on doing the typical slasher thing - getting a bunch of drunk teens in an abandoned house and knocking them off one by one. He gets advice from a retired serial killer, Eugene (Scott Wilson) and is threatened by a man who's on to him, Doc Holloran (Robert Englund) Taylor and crew are there capturing it all. Leslie Vernon is fucking hilarious to start with, and clearly very passionate about what he does. He tells Taylor all of his secrets and can barely contain his excitemen
Read more

Please join me in my Favorite Movie Titles Blogathon!

-
Image
Earlier this week I made a post where I ran through the letters of the alphabet with my favorite movie titles. There were a few people that suggested I turn it into a blogathon, and I've never done that before. So here goes nothing! Since this is my first attempt at a blogathon, it's all pretty simple, and it's hopefully a quick post that everyone can join in. Rules: 1) Going through the alphabet, list your favorite movie title beginning with each letter.  2) You don't have to necessarily  like the movie to use it's title.  3) Use the banner at the top of this post in yours. 4) Please have submissions in by Friday, May 30th*. (But I'll be honest, if you send them to me after that date, I'll still add them to my post.) You can either leave a link to your post in the comments here or tweet it to me, ( @ramblingfilm )  Thanks everyone! :)  *I had to move the date back a week due to Photobucket threatening me with bandwidth issues. But
Read more