Member-only story
The Exquisite Eeriness of Bird Horrors Part I: ‘Vivarium’
Is “Bird Horror” becoming a new, intriguingly strange trend in contemporary horror?
This is the first installment of a three-part series.
What is a “Bird Horror?”
It would be too vague and imprecise to define the term “Bird Horror” as a creature feature with vicious and monstrous birds. Or, at least, it’d be an inaccurate description of the three movies I’ll cover in this series. They’re eerily disturbing, hard-to-define flicks that don’t fit into any usual horror subgenre. Story-wise, each of them differs, yet there’s a common thread that inadvertently connects them to each other. It’s the peculiarly frightening and off-putting ways of “humans” internalizing an animalistic, bird-like behavior to transform themselves into feral and bizarre entities. They aren’t human beings but not animals either. What are they then? Let’s find out.
Vivarium and The Cuckoo People
Vivarium tells you upfront it’s a Bird Horror but doesn’t specify how. It’s an unsettling, challenging movie on a first watch because you’re unaware of what to look for and how to interpret a variety of scenes that seem odd and nonsensical at first. But starting with its pivotal opening sequence of a cuckoo pushing out hatchlings from their nest to claim it as its own, Lorcan Finnegan’s feature knows exactly what it’s doing. And it uses every tool at its disposal to deliver us to a devastating conclusion.
The cold open connects directly to Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) and Emma (Imogen Poots), our protagonist couple, who find the dead hatchlings at the bottom of a tree and bury them diligently. They’re a happy couple in their 30s, openly affectionate with each other, looking to find their first cozy home (what their landscaper and school teacher salary can afford) to potentially raise their kids in one day. That leads them to real estate agent Martin (Jonathan Aris making you uncomfortable from the first moment), eager to sell a place in the suburbs called Yonder.
Martin is as disturbing and repellent as a real estate guy can be. Everything he says sounds like a pre-recorded and robotic sales pitch he likely repeats to every unlucky…
