VIVARIUM - Movie Review

Greetings Steemians,

This is the first movie review I've ever done. It probably won't fall into the classification of a typical movie review either.

I'm going to pick this movie apart, and give (mostly) everything away, so if you think you might want to watch it, then perhaps you might not want to read this post.

Source

The IMDB description reads:

"A young couple looking for the perfect home find themselves trapped in a mysterious labyrinth-like neighborhood of identical houses." -IMDB

The description on Amazon where I watched it was about the same.

Had I known what this movie was really all about, I probably would not have watched it.

I am someone who rarely enjoys a movie, for reasons I will not go into, but I do enjoy psychological thrillers once in a while, so this seemed interesting.

I'll now write a description of the entire movie as I perceived it. This would be a good point to stop reading if you do not want to know what happens.

A young newlywed couple is looking to buy their first home to start a family in.
Unsuspectingly, they arrive at a home brokerage with a very odd fellow as a sales rep trying to reel them in.
They follow him to a home community where all of the houses are identical, toting an unsightly green color for all of the identical homes.
As he's showing them around, he vanishes and they find themselves hopping back in their car to get out of there.
They find themselves lost in a maze of the same houses, always coming back to the same #9 he showed them.
Eventually the car runs out of gas and they have no other choice than to hunker down in the pre-fab cookie cutter atrocity.
The next day a box arrives with a baby in it, with a note reading "Raise the child and be released."
They began raising a child that was no child at all, but some kind of demonic android thing that grows insanely fast.
The child is not very nice, and pretty much torments them every waking hour, as it grows in months to a full grown adult.
There are some psychological aspects of Stockholm syndrome that happen throughout these fast phases, as well as maternal confusion, and meanwhile the husband becomes obsessed with digging because he thinks it is going to lead to a way out, or an answer to what is going on.
This day after day digging leads him to exhaustion and sickness.
The weird demonic android thing is being communicated with through odd symbols and matrix like codes on a smart television, and at one point goes underground where the wife follows him and ends up back to the surface.
She also finds a book showing the symbols and drawings of humanoids, but this is as far of an explanation as you really get about what these things actually are.
The husband dies, and the child thing that is now a man puts him in a body bag and throws him in the hole he dug. (There was also another dead body down there in a body bag that had been discovered by the man right before he died.)
The wife bearing witness to this entire disposal of his body take place is having a breakdown and tries to kill the thing unsuccessfully.
She become exhausted herself, and while still alive he puts her in a body bag too. Saying that "It's time to be released."
He throws her down in the hole in the same fashion, body bag and all.
Then he takes their car, gases it up, and drives to the Real estate brokerage where the original salesman (a creature like him) is an old man getting ready to die (previously a young man 6 months ago)
He takes the name tag, puts the old creature in a body bag, stuffs him in a cabinet, sits down at the desk, a new couple walks in, the end.

---

I found this movie to be good on some levels, but very much lacking in crucial information which would have made the movie a bit better.

Overall the acting was pretty good in my opinion, and the psychological components were played out pretty well. It kind of had a Truman show vibe in the beginning, but later took on a very psychotic twist.

It terms of gore it wasn't explicit at all, and nudity was minimal with some relatively soft and not very long sex scenes.

But the psychological aspect of them being held prisoner to raise a non-human creature with intentions to kill them and repeat the cycle to more newlyweds to raise the creatures and be killed made the movie very twisted and disturbing.

My personal taste in movies is irrelevant for a movie review, because everyone has different tastes, but I'll just share it anyway.

This one was a bit disturbing for me and there certainly is no happy ending here.
I really expected them to bash that thing up and find a way out. I was rooting for them.

I thought that dude might find an entry through the hole and go fuck shit up!
But no, they get murdered after undergoing literal mental torture, and thrown in a hole and buried...
It wasn't my cup of tea, I needed to see that jerk go down, not win.

Also I didn't like that it was NEVER explained what they were, how they operated, how they grew, nothing... total blunder for the quality of the movie.
This might seem a little finicky too, but I think the description should somehow state that's it's a murder movie, like "Newly weds get captured and tortured by psychotic murderous android creatures."

Then at least people would have some kind of warning.. I had no idea I was going to bear witness to a lady be put in a body bag that vacuum seals to be suffocated to death and thrown in a hole.

What are the effects on the minds of children and teenagers who see these images on television and online streaming services?
And even adults? This movie left an impact on me, and I wouldn't say it's a positive one, because I likely won't forget it and I didn't like that those poor people got murdered. I know it's just a movie, but it's a depiction of real people, being tortured and murdered by human looking things.

My overall rating on a scale of 1-10:

6

In terms of production, creativity of story line, it was pretty good. To give credit where it is due, the actors and actress did a pretty good job, and the quality of production (camera angles, visuals) was all pretty good in my opinion.

That is it for my review. If you read it and still would want to watch this, at least you will not be as shocked as I was.

Thank you for stopping by!

Much love,
@futuremind

Amplify your Steem experience with https://steemworld.org/
Created by @steemchiller