Vivarium (2020) - Movie Review

Everyone deserves safety and security in their lives. But there is such a thing as too much of it. We tend to function best with a certain degree of monotony to our everyday routines: A house to exist in, a bed to sleep in, a couch to sit on, a TV to wile away the hours with, a kitchen to cook in, a table with chairs to sit and eat at; y’know, standard suburban living. However, that same blanket of monotony can also smother. It can be a crushing and constant reminder that no matter what you may have done before you arrived, this is it. This is the life you have, every single hour of every single day, for however much you left to live.

Hounds Of Love (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: On her way to a party, teenager Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings) is picked up by suburban couple Evelyn (Emma Booth) and John (Stephen Curry), who offer her a lift. However, they don’t take her to the party; they take to the same place they took the last few strays they picked up from the side of the road: Shackled to a bed in their home. Turns, Evelyn and John’s sexual tastes lean to the more… adventurous, and if she wants to make it out alive, she’ll have to figure out how to turn the tables against her captors.

Suburbicon (2017) - Movie Review

 

I’ve been living in suburban neighbourhoods for pretty much my entire life. The mild isolation from living in a hidden-away culdesac, the golf course next door that insisted the family wore crash helmets when in the backyard, gossiping neighbours who go to prove that there are some high school patterns that some just don’t grow out of; I’ve seen my share of suburbia. Because of this, it’s little wonder to me that seemingly-innocent neighbourhoods are so often used not to show familial connection and comfort, but creeping dread. It all looks so nice and all the neighbours seem so nice… something’s wrong, isn’t there?

 

Cynical as it is, this mindset has led to a lot of good stories, from the nostalgic reality check of Pleasantville to the unnerving voyeurism of Rear Window to the popcorn horror of Goosebumps. Today’s film, co-written by the Coen brothers and George “Hard Left Hook” Clooney, is cut from the same cloth. But how good is it in that capacity? Or any capacity?