Vivarium

Primary school teacher Gemma and her boyfriend Tom, a landscaper, visit a housing development called Yonder, where all the homes appear identical. They are shown house number 9 by an unusual real estate agent named Martin, who unsettlingly mimics Gemma's answer after asking if they have children. During a tour of number 9, Martin disappears without explanation. Gemma and Tom attempt to leave the development but inexplicably end up going back to house 9, after which the couple drives through the seemingly endless, identical streets until eventually running out of fuel. Gemma and Tom sleep in the house and attempt to escape on foot but repeatedly return to the same house. Outside, they find a box containing vacuum-sealed, flavorless food. Tom sets the house on fire and the couple sleeps on the pavement. By morning, however, the fire has left no damage, and a new box appears, this time containing a baby boy and a message instructing them to raise the child in order to be released. After 98 days, the child has grown rapidly to the size of a ten-year-old, mimicking Tom and Gemma and shrieking when hungry. When it calls Gemma "Mother", she denies the role, while Tom refers to the child as "it". The couple waits in the garden with a pickaxe to ambush whoever is delivering the food and takes away the trash, but no one appears. Tom begins digging a hole in the garden while growing withdrawn. Meanwhile, the boy watches abstract, fractal-like patterns on television. Tom locks the boy in their car in hopes of luring whoever is responsible. However, Gemma takes pity and releases the boy. Tom continues digging and begins sleeping in the hole. One day, the boy disappears and returns with a strange book filled with symbols and drawings of humanoid figures with throat sacs. When Gemma asks him to mimic the person who gave him the book, he makes rasping sounds and inflates his own throat sacs. The boy matures to resemble a young adult and Tom becomes ill. The boy leaves each day and Gemma tries to follow him but always finds herself back at number 9. Tom continues to dig and finds a corpse in a vacuum bag. The boy locks Gemma and Tom out of the house. Gemma pleads with the boy for medicine for Tom but is denied. Tom dies and the boy zips him into a vacuum bag and throws it into the hole. At her breaking point, Gemma wounds the boy with the pickaxe. The boy hisses and crawls to the sidewalk, lifts it by the edge, and crawls under it into a labyrinth beneath the sidewalk. Gemma follows and slides down the hallway as if gravity has shifted direction, crashes through a door into what seems like an alternate reality, then into multiple similar realities and rooms in other houses with more boys and several strangers, one of whom is dead. She lands back in number 9, weak and moaning. The boy is cleaning the house. He carries her to a vacuum bag explaining that mothers die after raising their sons. She dies as he zips her in. The boy buries her with Tom, and the grass reforms over the defect. He drives back to the real estate office, where an aged Martin lies dying. Martin gives the boy his name tag and dies. The boy zips Martin into a vacuum bag and puts him into a garbage chute disguised as a file drawer. When a couple walks in the door, the boy greets them just as Martin did.

Plot from Vivarium (film)CC BY-SA 4.0