VIVARIUM
****
Dir: Lorcan Finnegan (15, 97 mins)
A suffocating satire on suburban life, this dark drama feels like an episode of Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone. Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots play a married couple, Tom and Gemma, touring a sprawling housing project called Yonder – suburbia to the nth degree. The houses are uniform: two up, two down boxes all painted a sickly green and furnished with chilling banality. Jonathan Aris is the android-like estate agent showing them around but, ultimately, the couple decide this is not for them and they try to leave… except they can’t. Yonder is labyrinthine, with roads stretching endlessly in an infinite loop. They are trapped, confined to a suburban lifestyle. Things become even more complicated when a baby arrives in a box, with the promise that, once they’ve raised it, they can leave Yonder. Whilst satirising cookie-cutter suburban dwelling, gender roles are also examined as the couple struggle to define themselves, asking lots of questions about how life ought to be lived. Fascinating, engrossing and disturbing, this is sci-fi with a bite.
Opens Mar 27
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