History Film / Vivarium

* AnimalMotif: The boy has a cuckoo bird motif. He is a baby being given to a pair of unwitting parents, he is growing at a very quick rate, he is very loud and demanding for food, and it's clear whatever gave him to his parents will punish them for failure to care for him.

* TheUnreveal: Nothing about the boy or Martin, where the neighborhood is or how it functions, why Tom and Gemma are there and why they're raising the child or what the overall motive of the captors is is ever revealed.

* AmbiguousSyntax: [[spoiler: "Take care of the child and you will be released". It means death, not freedom.]]
* AnimalMotif: The boy has a cuckoo bird motif. He is a baby being given to a pair of unwitting parents, he is growing at a very quick rate, he is very loud and demanding for food, and it’s clear whatever gave him to his parents will punish them for failure to care for him.

* DefiantToTheEnd: [[spoiler: Gemma dies, but uses her last breath to curse the boy.]]
* DiedInYourArmsTonight: [[spoiler: Tom succumbs to whatever sickness he was afflicted with and dies being cradled by Gemma.]]

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Tom succumbs to his sickness and is followed by Gemma dying "of old age", with no one likely to ever know what happened to them. The boy buries both his adopted parents into the hole Tom dug earlier. He then takes Martin's place as the new real estate agent greeting a new couple, perpetuating the cycle.]]
* EldritchLocation: Yonder. It's a seemingly-endless suburb with no readily apparent means of entrance or exit once inside. At one point, Tom and Gemma walk in a straight line, following the sun and cutting through other yards and still end up back at Number Nine. There's no wind, the clouds all look artificial, the sun is a slightly off shade, the soil looks fake, there are no birds or animals of any kind, planes never fly over it and the food has no taste. There are no deliveries or trash collectors; groceries just appear in a cardboard box on the sidewalk whenever they're not looking directly at it and the trash leaves the same way. [[spoiler: Tom digs a few metres down into the lawn and finds nothing, but the boy manages to lift the sidewalk pavement to reveal a labrinyth of other house interiors, all with couples suffering in the same position as Gemma and Tom are. Gemma sinks through the sponge-like floors several times before arriving inside of her designated house again.]]

* HereWeGoAgain: [[spoiler: The film ends with the boy having taken over for Martin, even taking the same name, about to ensnare a new couple in the same situation.]]
* HumanoidAbomination:

* NoNameGiven: The child. Tom and Gemma never give him/it a name. [[spoiler: At the end of the movie, the child takes on the name "Martin," plucking the nametag off of his dying predecessor at the Yonder development office.]]

* RapidAging: The boy goes from a newborn to a young kid in just over three months and becomes a full adult in seemingly just a year or so. [[spoiler: Martin ages at the same rate, going from a man seemingly in his mid to late thirties or early forties to dying of old age by the end.]]

* ShootTheShaggyDog: Nothing is accomplished by anyone during this film other than a perpetuation of a short life-cycle which will just repeat again. [[spoiler: Given how rapidly the boy and 'Martin' age, it'll have to start over again pretty quickly, and in fact does start again in the final shot of the film.]]

* AliensAreBastards: [[spoiler:Whether or not they have BlueAndOrangeMorality, the aliens are deliberately luring numerous couples to their inescapable pocket dimension to slowly torment and kill them while forcing them to raise one of their own.]]

* EldritchLocation: Yonder. It's a seemingly-endless suburb with no readily apparent means of entrance or exit once inside. At one point, Tom and Gemma walk in a straight line, following the sun and cutting through other yards and still end up back at Number Nine. There's no wind, the clouds all look artificial, the sun is a slightly off shade, the soil looks fake, there are no birds or animals of any kind, planes never fly over it and the food has no taste. There are no deliveries or trash collectors; groceries just appear in a cardboard box on the sidewalk whenever they're not looking directly at it and the trash leaves the same way. [[spoiler: Tom digs a few metres down in the lawn and finds nothing, but the boy manages to lift the sidewalk pavement to reveal a labrinyth of other house interiors, all with couples suffering in the same position as Gemma and Tom are. Gemma sinks through the sponge-like floors several times before arriving inside of her house again.]]

''Vivarium'' is a 2019 science fiction thriller film based on a story by Lorcan Finegan. When a married couple were searching for a house, they are informed of a new development dubbed "Yonder" by a shady real estate agent. When they arrive, they see that all the houses are identical, and the clouds and sun appear to be artificial. Things only worsen for them when they are forced to raise a baby.

* AnimalMotif: The boy has a cuckoo bird motif. He is a baby being given to a pair of unwitting parents, he is growing at a very quick rate, he is very loud and demanding for food, and its clear whatever gave him to his parents will punish them for failure to care for him.

* CreepyChild: The Boy that Tom and Gemma are forced to raise is extremely creepy and inhuman.

* DisappearedDad: Tom refuses to take care of the Boy after the 98th day, effectively almost disappearing from his life despite being constantly just a several meters away and sleeping in the same house.

** When Tom sees the dead bird, he digs a small hole and buries it. [[spoiler:In Yonder, he becomes obsessed with digging a hole and is ultimately buried in it]].

* IncurableCoughOfDeath: Tom starts to become sick with something after a while. he starts coughing, wheezing, and developing sores on his body. Tom and Gemma theorize that it's because he's rejecting his role as the child's parent.

* StarfishLanguage: The book brought by the Boy is written entirely in an alien alphabet consisting of letters in form of squiggly shapes, without any spaces, commas, or periods.

** What the boy is no one knows. He has an adult voice, behaves in an inhuman fashion, and can inflate his throat as part of pretending to be the person he met when he was alone. He also ages at an unnatural rate, going from a newborn infant to a roughly seven-year-old in a span of just over 3 months. Gemma also discover that [[CreativeSterility imagination and dreaming are both completely foreign concepts to him]].

** What the boy is no one knows. He has an adult voice, behaves in inhuman fashion, and can inflate his throat as part of pretending to be the person he met when he was alone. He also ages at an unnatural rate, going from a newborn infant to a roughly seven-year-old in a span of just over 3 months. Gemma also discover that [[CreativeSterility imagination and dreaming are both completely foreign concepts to him]].

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/vivarium.jpg]]

*** Though this parallel doesn't ultimately make any sense, as [[spoiler:there are no human children being replaced, and the human parents are not tricked into loving the replacement child as their own, but hate and resent it.]]

* EldritchLocation: Yonder. It's a seemingly-endless suburb with no readily apparent means of entrance or exit once inside. At one point, Tom and Gemma walk in a straight line, following the sun and cutting through other yards and still end up back at Number Nine. There's no wind, the clouds all look artificial, the sun is a slightly off shade, the soil looks fake, there are no birds or animals of any kind, planes never fly over it and the food has no taste. [[spoiler: Tom digs a few metres down in the lawn and finds nothing, but the boy manages to lift the sidewalk pavement to reveal a labrinyth of other house interiors, all with couples suffering in the same position as Gemma and Tom are. Gemma sinks through the sponge-like floors several times before arriving inside of her house again.]]

** Martin as well. He has a permanent, disconcerting smile and odd mannerisms.

* SuburbanGothic: The suburban development of Yonder is a very nice neighborhood, even if all the houses look the same. However, a couple is trapped inside when Yonder turns out to be built with AlienGeometry, impossible to escape from. No matter how far they drive, they keep returning to the same house, and begin going mad from the experience.

* YoungerThanTheyLook: Gemma has remarked that the boy "ages like a dog." After 99 days, he appears to be about seven years old. After another TimeSkip, he's an adult, while Gemma and Tom have not visibly aged.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Tom succumbs to his sickness followed by Gemma with no one likely to ever know what happened to them. The boy buries both his adopted parents into the hole Tom dug earlier. He then takes Martin's place as the new real estate agent greeting a new couple, perpetuating the cycle.]]
* EldritchLocation: Yonder. It's a seemingly-endless suburb with no readily apparent means of entrance or exit once inside. At one point, Tom and Gemma walk in a straight line, following the sun and cutting through other yards and still end up back at Number Nine. There's no wind, the clouds all look artificial, the sun is a slightly off shade, the soil looks fake, there are no birds or animals of any kind, planes never fly over it and the food has no taste.

** The first scene of the movie is of a cuckoo bird kicking out the young of another bird and taking its place. The mother bird takes care of the alien bird even after it has grown much larger than her. This mirrors [[spoiler:the alien baby, which its parents are forced to care for even though it is a parasite]].

* ShootTheShaggyDog: Nothing is accomplished by anyone during this film other than a perpetuation of a short life-cycle which will just repeat again. [[spoiler: Given how rapidly the boy and 'Martin' age, it'll have to start over again pretty quickly.]]