ABOUT
“Vivarium”
“Vivarium” is a sci-fi, psychological thriller that follows a young couple, Gemma and Tom (played by Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg), who are looking to buy their first house together. When a strange real estate agent leads them to a suburban development called Yonder, they suddenly become trapped in a maze of identical houses, eeek! Directed by Lorcan Finnegan, who also made “The Surfer” with Nicolas Cage a few years ago (also a very trippy film).
“Yes I suppose it does look like a cloud…a cloud that’s shaped like a cloud.”
WHAT
MAKES IT
LIMINAL?
The entire, sprawling suburban neighborhood of Yonder functions as an actual liminal space. The endless rows of identical, empty, and unnaturally pastel green houses are uncanny precisely because they mimic a normal neighborhood. The repetition and sameness strip the film’s setting of any human function, leaving only a hollow, looping version of domestic life.