Vivarium's purgatory is more clear-cut, though that somehow doesn't make it any less mysterious...

| Dec 30, 2020

The story comes to a flawless punchline at almost exactly 27 minutes. The snag is that Vivarium has more than an hour still to run...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2020

Domesticity sucks the life out of everyone. But it's thin thematic reward for seeing the wheels behind this performer's eyes grind to a halt.

| Original Score: C+ | Apr 1, 2020

Poots and Eisenberg, effortlessly empathetic and convincing, have done sterling work here.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2020

Vivarium is an ingenious, relentless sci-fi horror from Irish director Lorcan Finnegan and writer Garret Shanley.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2020

Vivarium imagines the horror of being trapped inside your own home. What a concept!

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 31, 2020

There are times this feels like a single idea stretched to feature length. But there's enough visual and thematic invention to keep viewers gripped and unsettled...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 29, 2020

I was so onboard with this film for a long time. Really interesting setup and really great acting, but it just doesn't go anywhere.

| Mar 28, 2020

There's more hand-me-down genre movie tropes than recognizable human behavior in the new sci-fi/horror hybrid Vivarium.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 27, 2020

The surface chills don't stick that well without a deeper story.

| Mar 27, 2020

The conclusion may feel inevitable, but there's enough eccentricity and wit in the premise to carry the film a long way, just so long as it doesn't have an answer for what exactly is happening.

| Mar 26, 2020

The suffocating conformity of suburbia is a hardly a new movie metaphor - and this never fully delivers on the higher concepts it hints at. Still, it's an intriguing puzzle.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 26, 2020

A gloomy yet precise parable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 26, 2020

There's a consistent inventiveness - and grim humor - to this treatment of a seemingly well-worn theme.

| Mar 26, 2020

Finnegan and Shanley have devised a commendably dense, insightful and genuinely thought-provoking modern sci-f thriller.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 24, 2020

From my semi-quarantined perch, it feels like one very long, very overcooked joke - and I've choked on enough gags this past week and a half to last a lifetime.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 23, 2020

This a parable about adulthood boasts deeply cynical takes on home, community, and childrearing.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 21, 2020

Vivarium is a lab-rat experiment of a film, with flat, facetious humour and a single insidious joke maintained and developed with monomaniacal intensity.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 26, 2020

We're not mad at you, "Vivarium," we're just disappointed.

| Dec 12, 2019

A low-key science-fiction thriller whose obvious existential themes are well-served by a clever, confident execution that finds new ways to explore the hells of parenthood, commitment and ageing.

| Dec 12, 2019