Vivarium
dir. Lorcan Finnegan · 2019
Feature
Psychological Horror
Mood
Dark / Tense
Look
sterile, claustrophobic environments with a muted color palette
Structure
linear progression with escalating tension and surreal elements
Plot
A young couple is thinking about buying their starter home. And to this end, they visit a real estate agency where they are received by a strange sales agent, who accompanies them to a new, mysterious, peculiar housing development to show them a single-family home. There they get trapped in a surreal, maze-like nightmare.
Why watch
A couple, Gemma and Tom, find themselves trapped in a labyrinthine housing development that seems to stretch infinitely, with no escape in sight. As they grapple with their surreal predicament, the film unfolds as a chilling exploration of identity and consumerism, where the mundane becomes a source of horror.
Cultural context
critique of consumer cultureexistential dread in modern lifesuburban conformitythe search for identity in a commodified world