“I don’t like the way things are. It’s horrible.” Little did Vivarium screenwriter Garret Shanley know how piercing this sentiment might be when his film about a couple forced into seclusion was released. No one could have predicted that in the midst of the film’s rollout, the world over would be forced into mandated seclusion. Schools shuttered. Concerts, political rallies, and festivals pinched off. Everyone shut into their whatever square footage their budget affords. At least Jesse Eisenberg’s Tom and Imogen Poots’ Gemma have access to toilet paper.

This makes it even more of a shame then that despite what could have been an inherent poignant platform for Vivarium to benefit from, the film itself is dull and drab, dragging on without nearly enough meat to bulk up the underlying metaphor about the torment of childrearing. Vivarium begins conspicuously with some r/natureismetal footage of the parasitic cuckoo bird laying waste to an unsuspecting bird nest. Pushing out the actual offspring. Claiming the regurgitated meals for its own. The metaphor is not subtle: children are parasites come to claim nutrients until the host withers up and passes on.

Tom, a handyman, and Gemma, an elementary school teacher, might not be ready for kids of their own yet they do want a home to call theirs. Maybe even a dog. When the couple somewhat desperately wander into an off-kilter real estate office, the quirky agent urges them to check out a suburban community called “Yonder”, a maze made up of identical, mint green cookie-cutter houses. Once they are in, they cannot get out.

A thinly veiled metaphor about the fears of settling down and starting a family, Vivarium allows its anxieties about moving to the suburbs to child rear manifest as a literal cage for the two characters, who spend the rest of the movie trying to escape their hermetically sealed ecosystem.

When a baby arrives on their doorstep with instructors to raise him in order to be freed, Vivarium fails to engage the next gear. While the film insists how gross, disturbing and obnoxious children are – snotty parasites who grow into unappreciative strangers that literally suck the very life out of you – there is little deeper underlying intrigue to engage the viewer.

Parts of Vivarium reminded me of more successful low-fi sci-fi flicks, The One I Love for example, though it never finds the next gear. Had there been more layers to explore and a deeper purpose than to rage against the status quo, this might have really gone somewhere. The Twilight Zone-esque setup just runs out of steam pretty early on, though director Lorcan Finnegan remains uncompromising in his delivery. Aggressively committed to drawing out its rather one-note metaphor, the film ironically falls into the pattern of sameness it so actively rejects. The narrative may be intentionally repetitive and annoying – subjecting us to the torment of its characters’ experience – but that doesn’t make it wear on the nerves any less.

CONCLUSION: Imogen Poots is solid in the role and Eisenberg holds his weight but ultimately ‘Vivarium’ is a thin sci-fi mystery stretched far beyond the breaking point and one that’s more likely to bore audiences rather than bore into them.