Vivarium is a 2019 science fiction thriller film based on a story by Lorcan Finegan. When a married couple are 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.
The film provides examples of:
- Aliens Are Bastards: Whether or not they have Blue-and-Orange Morality, 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.
- Ambiguous Syntax: "Take care of the child and you will be released". It means death, not freedom.
- Animal Motifs: 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.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Tom smokes when stressed and regularly does so throughout the film.
- Creepy Child: The boy that Tom and Gemma are forced to raise is extremely creepy and inhuman.
- Most of his speech is mimicking Tom and Gemma's words, in their voices, while fresh words are spoken in fusion of their voices.
- He constantly spies on his parents, even when they're having sex.
- He has no empathy for the suffering of others and describes everything in a chipper, curious tone, even when being insulted or threatened.
- Most strikingly, if he wants something he will emit an unnatural shriek without stopping to breathe, and be perfectly calm once he gets it.
- Constantly has a dumb smile on his face when he's not shrieking.
- Deadly Euphemism: "Raise the child and be released."
- Deadpan Snarker: Tom has his moments as is to be expected from a character played by Jesse Eisenberg.
- Defiant to the End: Gemma dies, but uses her last breath to curse the boy.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Tom succumbs to whatever sickness he was afflicted with and dies being cradled by Gemma.
- Disappeared Dad: Tom refuses to take care of the boy after the 98th day, effectively almost disappearing from his life despite being constantly just several meters away and sleeping in the same house.
- Doorstop Baby: Tom and Gemma are sent one in a package labeled "Raise the child and be released."
- Downer Ending: 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.
- Eldritch Location: 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. 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.
- Flipping the Bird: Tom and Gemma greet their subjectively 10-year-old boy like this after the Time Skip, revealing instantly that they've been treating him like a parasite rather than a son.
- Foreshadowing:
- 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 the alien baby, which its parents are forced to care for, even though it is a parasite.
- When Tom sees the dead bird, he digs a small hole and buries it. In Yonder, he becomes obsessed with digging a hole and is ultimately buried in it.
- The Ghost: Save for the original "Martin," the other members of the boy's kind are this as they are mentioned but never seen. This also applies to the person that delivers Gemma and Tom's food. No matter how long they wait outside for them to show up, they don't come unless the pair are asleep.
- Hell Is That Noise: The child regularly unleashes an ungodly high-pitched shriek whenever he needs anything and it quickly drives Tom and Gemma mad.
- Here We Go Again!: 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.
- Humanoid Abomination:
- 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 discovers that imagination and dreaming are both completely foreign concepts to him.
- Martin as well. He has a permanent, disconcerting smile and odd mannerisms. He dies of old age within less than a year, with his replacement becoming the new Martin after disposing of his predecessor's body by folding it up.
- Incurable Cough of Death: 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.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Enforced. Tom refers to the boy as "it" and hates it. Gemma refers to the boy as "he" and at times shows empathy to him. In one scene, Tom calls her out for referring to the boy as "he" and insists that he's an "it."
- Minimalist Cast: For the vast majority of the movie, there are only three characters, Tom, Gemma, and the child.
- No Name Given: The child. Tom and Gemma never give him/it a name. 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.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Nothing about the nature of the situation Tom and Gemma are in, the nature of the boy, who is keeping them there and why, what exactly Martin is and what role he and his successors play or how the place operates is ever revealed.
- Overly Long Scream: When the boy is upset he can shriek for several minutes without stopping, not even pausing to breath.
- Punny Name: A Martin is a family of birds, and the Martin in the movies sells houses, so he could be called a House Martin.
- Perpetual Smiler: Martin, which further intimidates Tom and Gemma due to its artificial feel.
- Rapid Aging: 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. 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.
- Riddle for the Ages: Little about what's going on is ultimately revealed. Are Martin and his kind aliens? Where do they come from? Do they have any sort of end goal? Where does the boy go and who does he meet when he leaves the house? Where and what is Yonder?
- Sanity Slippage: Tom starts digging a hole in an attempt to get out. He eventually becomes obsessed with digging, even sleeping in the hole at night.
- Shady Real Estate Agent: Martin, who sells Gemma and Tom a house in the endless suburb of Yonder and seems to be some sort of alien who may or may not force them to raise an alien baby.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Nothing is accomplished by anyone during this film other than a perpetuation of a short life-cycle which will just repeat again. 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.
- Starfish Language: 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.
- Suburban Gothic: 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 Alien Geometry, impossible to escape from. No matter how far they drive, they keep returning to the same house, and begin going mad from the experience. What makes matters worse is that they're the only sign of life in the entire neighborhood, other than a clearly-inhuman Creepy Child forced upon them.
- Time Skip: After finding the baby, the film skips ahead 99 days, to when the boy looks to be about seven years old. The film later skips again to when the boy is an adult. Assuming he does in fact "age like a dog," it's probably about a year after the film began.
- Too Desperate to Be Picky: The food Gemma and Tom are given by Martin's kind looks like normal food but it's tasteless and makes them feel ill after they eat it. They end up eating it anyway because it's all they're provided.
- The Unreveal: 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 ever revealed.
- Would Hurt a Child: Tom locks the boy in the car rationalizing that whatever forces are behind their entrapment would try to rescue the boy after which they would be able to escape.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Gemma releases the child from the car after a short while, having developed maternal feelings for him. After being confronted with his inhuman nature and reconciling with Tom, she tells him that she regrets not letting him go through with it.
- Younger Than They Look: Gemma has remarked that the boy "ages like a dog." After 99 days, he appears to be about seven years old. After another Time Skip, he's an adult, while Gemma and Tom have not visibly aged.
