Vivarium

Lorcan Finnegan, 2019, Ireland-Belgium-Denmark-Canada

Story by Lorcan Finnegan and Garret Shanley; written by Garret Shanley

I went into ‘Vivarium’ with a vague sense of its premise and that it seemed to be met with a kind of indifference that intrigues me. In fact, ‘Vivarium’ ticked many of my genre boxes: the unreliability of reality, unfairness, leaning on the abstract and unanswerable, the unknowable. Of course, the title is a major clue, but I certainly got the most by knowing so little.

 Like Finnegan’s short film ‘Foxes’, the identikit nature of deserted suburban streets creates an eerie, otherworldly backdrop. Finnegan’s previous feature ‘Without Name’ sets the central idea that some places tend to the eerie, that they are bad news for those who find themselves susceptible to their influence (rather than the threat of the locals). But in ‘Vivarium’, it is a little different: these people are the kind of genre protagonists that don’t deserve to find themselves locked in a horror scenario. Add unfairness to the horror elements. Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg give insular, fine performances and this grounds the film as the craziness sets in.

This new and seemingly unpopulated community looks like a plastic display unit at the Real Estate Office. Supplies just appear, like in a game (and surely even more relatable in a lockdown world). Then a baby is delivered into the mix. Imprisoned in a baffling situation that they cannot escape, this scenario starts to wear away the couple. He becomes obsessed with digging a hole – just something to focus on – and her maternal inclinations are grazed, however much she resists. It resonates as a disturbing satire on the conservative demands to conform by an abstract, external force. Men: slave away senselessly for nothing attempting to get out. Women: play the role of motherhood. And the boy (Senan Jennings) is supremely eerie and unsettling, with his sweet looks and not-right voice, reciting the adults’ incriminating dialogue back at them – parroting that is surely recognised by any parent. And the screaming.

All there is becomes a fake existence at the hands of an uncaring omnipresent, abstract force. The force isn’t even being deliberately malign: it’s just doing what it does. This is the kind of concept that implies that all our existential crises and rumination is just an anomaly of the human race in the wider scheme of lifeforms just carrying out their existence. In this instance, it goes beyond being a mystery until it just grinds the couple to the nub. It doesn’t drive them to arguments or acrimony: they just drift apart, which is just as cruel.  

There are casual comments on Amazon that the third act fails, but I disagree: all the clues are there from the very opening. He was digging his grave all along, tying back to his burying the bird at the beginning. Cronenberg would be pleased: it is just a parasite taking its course in this nightmare without intentional malevolence. Whatever it is, as with everything, existence is purpose. The end revelations and reservations, the final madness where the surreal lets rip, are much needed after the measured build-up, but doesn’t forsake mystery for exposition.

‘Vivarium’ is a film whose creepiness reached far down in me to take root in a way that doesn’t happen often. A prime example of the uncanny.

And the screaming.

Grimmfest Day 3: "HP Lovecraft's The Deep Ones", "The Unhealer", "The Ideal Host"

HP LOVECRAFT’S THE DEEP ONES

• DIRECTOR- Chad Ferrin
• SCREENWRITER- Chad Ferrin
• 2020, USA

· Taken from Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos featuring The Deep Ones, Chads Ferrin’s film is bright and breezy but surprise-free. Of course, having Lovecraft’s name up there will pull ‘em in, and of course there is some tentacle action. It does have a defiantly retro man-in-a-monster-suit that might make some laugh, but I found it more endearing than any CGI effort. Otherwise, a sunny coastal setting, a just-less-than-serious feel and a decent cast make for an enjoyable watch that doesn’t outstay it’ welcome, even if it’s unlikely to leave a real dent.

 

THE UNHEALER

• Director - Martin Guigui
• Screenwriters - Kevin E. Moore & J. Shawn Harris
• USA, 2020

Another bullied kid gets supernatural powers to exact revenge on his relentless tormentors when they go too far. Of course this sub-genre this plays on unfairness, but 'The Unhealer' does so more than just revenge. This is built-in even more obviously when his power is that where they hurt him, they suffer the effects; meaning the extent of the revenge depends upon their brutality to him. But victims can’t catch a break, however cruel the bullies are, supernaturally empowered or not. That’s the bitterest horror and the meanest aftertaste.

Elijah Nelson makes a sympathetic lead in Kelly, the script making consistent use of his eating disorder throughout. And of course, Lance Henrickson makes a mark in his cameo. Moore and Harris’ screenplay is more concerned with the human interest than showcasing the kills, with sadness and unfairness dominating the proceedings. In this way, ‘The Unhealer’ distinguishes itself and lingers more than most.

 

AN IDEAL HOST

• DIRECTOR - Robert Woods
• SCREENWRITER - Tyler Jacob Jones
• 2020, Australia

Usually at FrightFest there’s an Antipodean crowd-pleasing genre-comedy that really stands out: ‘Deathgasm’. ‘One Hundred Acres’, Two Heads Creek’, ‘Mega Time Squad’, ‘Turbo Kid’. This is my first time at Grimmfest, and the trend continues with ‘An Ideal Host’, showing again that Australian genre-comedy is just a cut above (or at least, those that we see).

A somewhat precious couple are planning to the minute a dinner party with old friends to stage a marriage proposal, but an old, uninvited and unwanted friend also gate-crashes to upset proceedings. But she’s not the only gate-crasher…

The brevity of the credits reveal how low-budget this is: one location, few cast, director Robert Woods also co-produces, edits, is the cinematographer, etc. But Tyler Jacob Jones’ script and the ensemble cast – mostly from a comedy group Woods is part of, it seems – are consistently lively and funny without over-egging the pudding that any obvious limitations don’t come to mind. (Regarding over-egging: one of my favourite gags is when the film interrupts a cliché montage of the protagonist dressing up to kick-ass with “Enough of that!”).

Like ‘The Special’, there’s a sense that anything might be on the table until it we get some grounding, so there’s some mystery as well as the humour to spike the attention. It even throws in some proper gore. And the effects were all practical too with inventiveness coming thick and fast (the windshield-wipers-as-weapon also a favourite).

 A delight.

Unfairness in horror

Todd Tucker’s ‘The Terror of All Hallow’s Eve’ (2017, USA) is the kind of thing that I might consider my “comfort watching”. It is never going to be on anyone’s list of favourites, but it calls on my affection and enjoyment of this kind of B-horror, and especially the bildungsroman horror. I will always have a fondness for, understandably, the kind of thing I really took to as a teenager like ‘The Gate’, ‘Phantasm’ , ‘Basket Case’, ‘The Deadly Spawn’, Joe Dante flicks, etc. ‘The Terror of All Hallow’s Eve’ captures the tone of those Eighties video hits effortlessly. Limited locations, ambitious analogue puppet-monsters, underdog protagonist, etc, all present and correct. Its pleasures are those coveted by horror fans – no crossover appeal here, no “Art Horror”. It’s the kind of film that gets the type of criticism that Trevor Johnson says of ‘Phantasm’: “…a surprisingly shambolic affair whose moments of genuine invention stand out amid the prevailing incompetence.”*

 

But the reason I like and can’t quite shake ‘The Terror of All Hallow’s Eve’ is that it possesses that quality that horror as a genre centres on all the time but rarely gets discussed as an essential ingredient: unfairness.

 

All Tim (Caleb Thomas) wanted was a little payback for his tormentors: whether that’s right or wrong may be debatable, but it’s unquestionably understandable. When I saw this at FrightFest, director Tucker said it was semi-autobiographical which made its ultimate message, for me, even more thoughtful. Because ‘Hallow’s Eve’ goes just beyond the revenge fantasy to a further, more uncomfortable but deeper message: don’t be tricked into losing your temper, because you will pay the consequences of your anger. Our protagonist Tim’s vulnerability and anger are understandable, and it’s easy to see how he was tricked, but it’s unfair. Bullied into tragedy.

 

Unfairness: It’s why ‘Summer of ‘84’ ends up having such an unexpectedly upsetting resonance, and why it suddenly turns from enjoyable to deeply troubling. It's there in ‘Night of the Living Dead’, ‘Phantasm’, ‘The Vanishing’, ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Vivarium’, ‘Spiral’, most werewolf tales, ‘Sleep Tight’; in the World Cinema outrage at the treatment of women in ‘Under the Shadow’; in the surreal grief cul-dsac of ‘Koko-Di Koko-Da’, etc. It is a straight route to tragedy. It’s in every film where people just want to go out and have a good time, or just get on with sorting things out, but meet something terrible: like ‘Vacancy’, ‘The Strangers’, ‘Wolf Creek’ and ‘Willow Creek’, et al.

 

I don’t think I’ll include the ‘Friday the 13^th’ or ‘Final Destination’ or the ‘Hostel’ franchise, that particular strain of horror, because part of the point in those seems to be that the victims are superseded by the spectacle, or are somehow deserving (perhaps because they are obnoxious, sexually active, privileged, etc). It’s not unfairness these films are interested in, but in the kick of shock-violence, the delights of schadenfreude. There must be some empathy and sympathy to generate the haunting quality of unfairness to the undeserving that I am speaking of.  

 

Unfairness is one of the society’s true horrors. Dramas like ‘Kes’, ‘The Bicycle Thieves’, and ‘Calm With Horses’ have it, that’s very much engaged with political context and subtext. It’s why ‘Pelo Malo’, ‘Libero’ and ‘Leviathan’ bug me, capturing a quality of life that is both mundane and empirically cruel. The horror genre stretches these anxieties to surrealistic heights, manifests them. It is not so much injustice that permeates the genre – although there is that political centre to ‘Get Out’, and 'Spiral' too because they're talking about race and class - but more the horrific randomness of luck. Even titles such as ‘Dark Skies’, ‘Krampus’, ‘Sinister’ are elevated by this “unfairness” aftertaste. ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’ has an edge of unfairness that gives it more than average gravity (although mitigated with the hint that it might not be over…).**

 

Recently watching episode 1 of ‘Wolf Creek: season 2’, and it’s an episode dedicated to setting up the bus of tourists that are going to be subjected to the horror of Mick Taylor (a terrifying John Jarratt): the episode cliff-hanger was predictable enough, but by the time it came, the characters had been established enough as ordinary, decent people that it gave me the dread required because what was going to happen to them was – at the very least – unfair.

 

It’s why the body-swap plot in ‘Tales from the Loop’ had a deep-set sadness.

It’s why ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me’ achieves tragedy and haunts. Poor Laura.

 

It’s why ‘Them’ is so much more disturbing, and why it achieves wider range when class enters the context.

 

For comparison, ‘Better Watch Out’ doesn’t linger as a downer because unfairness is not allowed to win, even if the damage is already done (unfairness surely belongs to Luke’s pal, and that’s the distressing part).

 

Unfairness is such a troubling, unshakable ingredient that it makes any horror handiwork reach deep down into our outrage, paranoia, fear and empathy. It's upsetting. Horror seems superficially to be considered and graded by how “scary” it is; but for me unfairness is horrifying, for it is merciless and indiscrimination. It stains much deeper.

 

 

• * Trevor Johnson, ‘Phantasm’, ‘Time Out Film Guide 2011’ (Ed. John Pym, Time Out Guides, pg. 824

** ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’ is like ‘Goosebumps’ done with less temperance. A note here that in regards to RL Stine who, however hokey and cliché his stuff is, is surely the gateway to a lifetime of horror fandom for many: Stine’s  ‘The Haunting Hour’ is harder stuff than ‘Goosebumps’ in that there’s a lot of unfairness going around. The twist of the episode ‘My Robot’, or the meanness of ‘Pumpkinhead’ for example. Or even ‘A Creature was Stirring’ where the fact that the snow has disappeared at the end would, as an incongruity, surely be indication