Vivarium
Saban Films | Release Date (Streaming): March 27, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
8
Negative:
1
Watch Now
Stream On
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Original-CinJim SlotekMar 26, 2020
While I already miss the experience of seeing these films in a theatre, Vivarium does evoke TV precedents, most notably Twilight Zone in the cleanness of its premise and the parsing out of dark details on a need-to-know basis. Read full review
83
The Film StageJared MobarakMar 26, 2020
I have to give the filmmakers a ton of credit here because they walk themselves to a point of no return as far as where things are heading and they do not blink. They lift the curtain to briefly show us the horrors beneath the sterile walls of this prison and let them exist as inevitability rather than something that can be altered. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeApr 2, 2020
Moving from his standard New York neurotic, Eisenberg does a convincing job of moving from frustration to a violent, active mania. Poots is better still as someone who can’t find the words to communicate her growing despair. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterStephen DaltonMar 26, 2020
It is a superior genre piece at heart, but elevated by its high-caliber leads, Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg, plus a script rich in political and cultural resonance. Read full review
80
Screen RantHannah HoolihanMar 26, 2020
Vivarium is a wonderfully strange and gripping thriller that examines the stresses of homeownership and starting a family, perhaps all-too-soon. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMar 26, 2020
It’s open to debate whether this claustrophobic little parable means something. It’s devilishly clever but there’s a suspicion that this is beautiful calligraphy without words. And yet with the added circumstance of self-isolation, quarantine and quiet four-walled despair, Vivarium will undoubtedly resonate. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawFeb 26, 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. In its way, this film is an emblem of postnatal depression and simple loneliness. Read full review
75
IndieWireRyan LattanzioMar 27, 2020
You’re reminded of the all-time “Twilight Zone” chillers that left you pondering and unsettled in your living room, questioning how well you knew the people sitting next to you. Given the current state of things, you’ll have to experience Vivarium in much the same way. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMar 27, 2020
The movie demands a willing suspension of disbelief and, for those who can accommodate, it opens a portal into a hellish, allegorical nightmare about the placid myth of suburbia gone wrong. Read full review
73
PolygonKaren HanMar 27, 2020
At heart, Vivarium is a puzzle, a story full of twists and thin on character development. To the film’s credit, the alien-ness is effective, lending Vivarium the tenseness of a horror movie and engaging the audience where the story fails. Read full review
70
VoxAlissa WilkinsonApr 2, 2020
Though it verges on the overstuffed at times, Vivarium is dirty, sinister, hair-raising, and thoroughly entertaining — and completely worth a watch if you’re feeling a little, well, trapped. Read full review
70
Screen DailyTim GriersonMar 26, 2020
The movie sometimes overstates its ideas, but Poots keeps Vivarium from being just a coy, chilly intellectual exercise. She adds flesh and soul to what might be the film’s most disturbing notion: In some ways, we all become encased in the lives we have stumbled into. Read full review
70
The New York TimesGlenn KennyMar 26, 2020
There’s a consistent inventiveness — and grim humor — to this treatment of a seemingly well-worn theme. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMar 23, 2020
Vivarium is an exercise in wringing dry the audience’s emotions until we’re nothing but husks. For some, that could be appreciatively cathartic right about now. Myself, I felt little other than a deep and nagging depression. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeMar 31, 2020
There’s enough visual and thematic invention to keep viewers gripped and unsettled, particularly in these unprecedented, isolated times. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Mar 25, 2020
If you can look past the gallingly obvious and derivative metaphor, Vivarium has its moments of effective "Twilight Zone" creepiness. Read full review
50
IGNIan SpellingApr 4, 2020
Vivarium rates as an ambitious near-miss. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 26, 2020
Like many a genre picture before it, there’s a sci-fi gimmick and little else to prop it up beyond repeating variations on “How do we escape this suburban hell?” ad infinitum. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesNoel MurrayMar 26, 2020
Finnegan offers a vision of domesticity as a soul-sucking grind, done for the benefit of malevolent overlords. His film chills the mind more than the spine. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineHenry StewartMar 21, 2020
This a parable about adulthood boasts deeply cynical takes on home, community, and childrearing. Read full review
45
TheWrapBen CrollMar 26, 2020
Feeling simultaneously overstuffed and undercooked, Lorcan Finnegan’s Vivarium tries to ring a warning bell about, well, a lot of things. In the end, though, it works best as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of filmmakers biting off more than they can chew. Read full review
40
VarietyOwen GleibermanMar 26, 2020
Vivarium has a canny visual design (you won’t soon forget the rows of Monopoly houses), but the movie becomes an example of the imitative fallacy. It makes the audience feel deadened too. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsMar 27, 2020
Vivarium isn’t a fun watch, and not just because it’s generally claustrophobic and insistently bleak. Read full review
More From This Movie

64 Critic Reviews

5.1 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL