Vivarium

Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are looking for a home and wander into the sales office for a new housing estate.

The salesman is very off-putting but out of politeness they agree to follow him and view a house there.

No good will come of this.

CW: Bleak as fuck, do not watch if you're feeling at all mentally fragile

This cosmic horror traps the pair in a fractal suburban non-space from which there is no escape and forces them to go through the motions of that life.

Both turn in very believable performances as people trying to cope with an impossible, passively terrifying situation.

It suffers from needing its runtime to make the empty misery of the situation work but also having people suffer from lack of agency for 110 minutes out of 130 isn't exactly a thrilling ride and if you're at all keyed into cosmic horror ideas you'll know where it's going from the beginning. Given this it works about as well as it could. It would be easy to say it should be shorter but I think its impact comes from being full length.

This is perhaps the most bleak film I've seen for some time. I wouldn't recommend it but I'm glad it exists, 7/10. It goes onto the "I never want to see this again" list.