31 Days of Horror: Escape a liminal suburban hellscape in Vivarium

If you enjoyed 2026’s Backrooms and yearn for a return to repetitive, liminal, or not-quite-right-spaces, check out to Lorcan Finnegan’s 2019 release, Vivarium.

While Backrooms transpires almost entirely inside, Vivarium takes place in an endless, empty suburb. When young couple Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) go to a real estate agent in search of a starter home, they’re a little wrong-footed by his manner, which is just off. However, they’re about to get much more freaked out when they find the estate he directs them to is a deserted landscape of identical houses – and they can’t get out.

It only gets weirder from there.

Vivarium is genuinely disconcerting. On Stephen King’s 3 levels of horror, it’s a solid terror: “…when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…” This is one that doesn’t need blood and guts to turn your stomach, and it’ll stay with long after the lights go out.

Poots and Eisenberg hold their own, their chemistry working well as they spend the movie largely alone (no spoilers for why this isn’t entirely alone…). Kristian Eidnes Andersen’s score is subtle but assists with the movie’s atmosphere, which is top-tier. All in all, it’s a unique film that’s done well – something rarer than it should be.

Who’s it for? I’ve already compared it to Backrooms, so you’ll love it if that’s your jam. If you’re a member of r/LiminalSpace, you should definitely check it out. Fans of Stephen King’s Under the Dome, Steven L. Peck’s A Short Stay in Hell, or Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves will love this one…and if you thought ant farms were vaguely creepy when you were a child – Vivarium is for you.

Playing on the human fear of sameness (because as much as we’re afraid of the unknown, we’re also programmed to realize that nothing natural is truly identical), Vivarium hits viewers right at home. The estate you thought was safe for your family is actually a trap. Your teen who feels stuck in the boring sameness might really be there forever. And something bigger than you, something malevolent, is keeping you there.

Or perhaps it was an early exploration into Level 9.

Vivarium is streaming on Tubi and Prime.