Upon visiting the tract, the Yonder property personifies cookie cutter building methods to a t. Every home looks absolutely identical and Martin has an answer for every question. Midway through the sales presentation on house 9, he disappears, leaving the couple completely on their own. Upon leaving, every attempt to drive their car out of the estate is met with a return to the original departure point, house number 9.

After all attempts to escape prove ineffective, even burning the house to the ground has no lasting effect. When they wake after the conflagration, the house still stands and now a box has now been left for them, a box containing a newborn baby boy. It’s a testimony to the film’s disconcerting effect that all this is only the beginning of the escalation of their strange journey.

The grind of a daily existence with no real change ebbs away all remaining fragments of Gemma and Tom’s sanity and ambition. This reduces them to empty shells, ones that are utterly devoid of any hope or ambition. As the film reaches its climax, it remains utterly bonkers right up to its final frame. Vivarium is a unique experience for a unique time.

Vivarium  is now available to view On Demand – currently available via iTunes, Google Play, Telstra, Fetch and Umbrella and will be on Foxtel PVOD from May 6.

Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/UmbrellaEnt

Still set in the world of sorority houses, hazing and the holidays, we follow Riley Stone (Imogen Poots) as she recovers from a traumatic experience and tries to bond with her fellow sorority sisters. When a number of her friends go missing, she alone feels that something is not right.

The film’s pacing does little to build the tension as its middle section is quite slow and doesn’t really take advantage of the underlying reason that the girls are going missing. Peppering these lesser moments with some ominous undertones of what was coming would have helped elevate this middle third.

The last reel goes to some extreme as it turns one of the most misogynistic tirades ever filmed into an exercise of girl power in the blink of an eye. Then it wraps things up with one of the most off the wall and riotous scenes of recent memory. It truly is bat shit crazy.
Rob Hudson
www.facebook.com/UniversalPicturesAU

Hawthorne College is quieting down for the holidays. But as Riley Stone (Imogen Poots, Green Room) and her Mu Kappa Epsilon sisters—athlete Marty (Lily Donoghue, The CW’s Jane the Virgin), rebel Kris (Aleyse Shannon, The CW’s Charmed), and foodie Jesse (Brittany O’Grady, Fox’s Star)—prepare to deck the halls with a series of seasonal parties, a black-masked stalker begins killing sorority women one by one.

As the body count rises, Riley and her squad start to question whether they can trust any man, including Marty’s beta-male boyfriend, Nate (Simon Mead, Same But Different: A True New Zealand Love Story), Riley’s new crush Landon (Caleb Eberhardt, Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle) or even esteemed classics instructor Professor Gelson (Cary Elwes).

Whoever the killer is, he’s about to discover that this generation’s young women aren’t about to be anybody’s victims.

This December ring in the holidays by dreaming of a Black Christmas.

From director Sophia Takal (Always Shine) from the script she wrote with April Wolfe (Widower), comes a bold new take on the 1974 slasher classic produced by Jason Blum (Halloween, Split) for his Blumhouse Productions, by Ben Cosgrove (The Good German, Rumor Has It) and by Adam Hendricks (Cam, Bloodline, Lucky) for Divide/Conquer. Blumhouse’s Couper Samuelson and Jeanette Volturno will executive produce with Divide/Conquer’s Greg Gilreath and Zac Locke.
www.facebook.com/UniversalPicturesAU

It casts some big names in familiar roles such as Owen Wilson as the goofy good guy, Rhys Ifans as the tinsel town lothario and Debi Mazar as a powerful lady behind the scenes. It also successfully casts some against type such as Jennifer Aniston who is great as the crazy shrink and Cybill Shepherd who is very convincing as a frumpy housewife.

The snappy repartee brings to mind the feel of a Woody Allen film but without the baggage. The cinematography and set design make sure the viewer is caught up in a world of cosmopolitan locations and lives of privilege but is anchored by scenes of the real world (in this case the humble beginnings of lead character Isabella Patterson played by Imogen Poots).

The film pays dividends to those with a knowledge and love of the cinema booth past and present with a number of insider jokes and one fantastic surprise cameo. With so few films made these days for the more experienced cinephile, She’s Funny That Way is definitely one not to miss.

Rob Hudson
www.lionsgatepremiere.com/shesfunnythatway