Vivarium (2019)

Rated R for nudity, sex, language, violence, and death.  It's a horror movie where, intentionally, not a lot happens.  People get frustrated to death. It doesn't mean that it's boring by any stretch of the imagination.  It's actually quite the brutal movie.  Everything about the movie is just a bit more upsetting than it has to be.  It's not gory, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a bit upsetting throughout.  R.

DIRECTOR: Lorcan Finnigan

Every time I teach a film class, I have a student who tells me that I need to see a movie that I haven't heard of.  In the past, it was Perfect Blue and John Wick.  I always go into these movies with ridiculously high expectations.  I think with all three of these movies, I leave disappointed.  That's not fair. Why do I have to be a punk like that?  I have to be coloring these viewings with myself in high school.  I know that if I met my high school self today, I would find that person's favorite movies cringe.  I won't say that Vivarium is terrible.  By no means is it terrible.  It's a pretty darned good movie...that really doesn't gel with me.

I will be honest.  I have a good reason for not loving this movie.  Vivarium's biggest problem comes from its absolute lack of subtlety.  The allegory of the film, constantly (and often, literally) being screamed at us, is that the suburbs will kill you.  The biggest question I had after watching this movie was about the screenwriters.  There's not a lot out there about the makers of this movie.  Maybe if there's a commentary track, I'll check that out one day.  But I have two scenarios in my head.  I'm not sure if the writer of this movie had a family that was burning him out and he wrote a horror movie about it.  The other seems more likely and that's someone who prides himself at not being a sheep.  This is someone who lives the high life in the big city and scoffs at those people who have fallen prey to that old trap of marriage and kids.  But everything about this movie is so bitter.  There's nothing that isn't screaming that the suburbs are a way to slowly die in sadness.

There's a flaw to the entire premise though.  I know.  It's a horror movie with allegory and I should be a little patient with it.  Allegories often can't be perfect by their very nature.  One of the key elements of the movie is the notions in the movie is that Gemma continually repeats that she is not the boy's mother.  If the main characters of the movie are avatars for the screenwriter, then there is the notion that these people are somehow trapped by something that they never really wanted.  Maybe this might be one of those pro-choice allegories, but a poorly done pro-choice allegory that argues that a life of comfort is equal to death.  Are there sad things about family life?  Yes.  Do people --including myself --sometimes get depressed about having to take care of children and houses all day?  Definitely.  But the fundamental thing that is missing from this story is the reason why I do it all.  If you had to go to the suburbs and raise kids, with all of the screaming that is shown throughout the film, it's because I choose to do it.  

I get it.  There is a stigma --appropriately so --about the ability to leave all of this behind.  People shouldn't be deadbeat dads and leave their family to fend for themselves.  But everything in this movie is about how much the notion of four walls and a child are miserable.  There really isn't a moment where the film lets in that at least one of them starts to love the child.  The reason why we put up with kids screaming all day isn't so that we can one day escape.  Again, deadbeat parents can do that anytime.  But we do it because the kids bring more joy than they do misery.  They scream.  God, Vivarium got that part so right.  But the screaming is pretty minimal.  That doesn't a horror movie make.  I think a lot of this ties into the notion that Tom and Gemma don't really deserve what happens to them.

I'm going to connect this to my problem with Smile.  Tom and Gemma kinda / sorta agree to go on a tour to Yonder.  But these are fundamentally good people.  With Smile and Vivarium, you have two characters who do the right thing all the time.  With Smile, the protagonist helps the mentally ill.  She doesn't break any kind of contract.  The evil is thrust upon her.  The most evil thing that Tom and Gemma do is to walk into a real estate office.  As I write that, it might be the commentary that the filmmakers want to say.  The very notion of considering a next step might be a crime in this universe.  The frustrating thing, as a viewer, is that the characters almost never have a choice in anything that they do.  That's the premise of the film. Everything in their lives is predetermined.  There are a limited amount of choices and none of them actually are the right answer.  I've seen the stranded / imprisoned horror story and we get that the horror comes from not being able to control your situation.  It's just that Gemma and Tom really never made any kind of decision.

Every action before this moment is about how good these people are.  (I think that I'm getting more of the film the more I write about it, despite the fact that I kind of got it before?) Tom buries the baby birds pushed out of the nest by the cuckoo, foreshadowing the arrival of the Boy. I know that the movie even tells me that this is just nature, that there is no reason for these things.  But Tom does the right thing.  He buries the baby birds because it was an act of kindness.  Similarly, Gemma works with little kids as a kindergarten teacher.  Again, this is all the point.  I'm trying to argue my way out of a losing battle.  But my frustration comes from how angry the movie comes across.