Given the weakness of the the most recent series of the Twilight Zone (I must confess I've only managed about half the episodes), I'm reticent to make the comparison, but Vivarium is a classic Twilight Zone-style story.
Young couple Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are looking to buy a starter home and are taken by a strange estate agent, Martin (Jonathan Aris), to an out-of-town development of identical homes on identical streets.
Martin leaves while the couple are looking around Number Nine... and suddenly they discover there's no way out of the, otherwise unpopulated, estate.
Wherever they go, they end up back at Number Nine.
Then a parcel is left for them: containing a baby, with a note telling them to raise the child and they will be set free.
Time passes; bland, tasteless food is left for them and their rubbish is taken away by unseen hands.
The couple are trapped there for days, weeks, months, and the baby blossoms into a creepy young boy (Senan Jennings), with an oddly deep voice and a habit of screaming like a banshee if he doesn't get what he wants.
If the static clouds in the perfect sky don't give it away, the clue is in the title, as they say.
Segueing swiftly from a dream-like idyll to nightmare fuel, Vivarium follows Tom and Gemma's life as they try to figure out what is going on, while coping with the demands of a freakish cuckoo in their familial nest.
With all the hints that are dropped along the way, there is only really one explanation for the goings-on that makes sense, but the script takes the bold step - given that it is so clear to anyone versed in this kind of weird storytelling - of not actually spelling it out.
Which is probably quite frustrating for the casual viewer.
But, in all honesty, Vivarium isn't a film I could imagine many casual viewers opting for.
However, for those of us that love this style of obtuse, almost surreal, art house, paranormal mystery and psychological horror, it is magnificent.
Twisting the conceit of nightmarish, suburban conformity way past its logical ends, Vivarium is a British spin on '50s American sci-fi horror mixed in with an almost live-action Rick and Morty level of stark brutality about the unfolding events (I was reminded of one episode in particular from the first season, but I can say no more as it would give away a bit too much!)
The performances, across the board, are mightily impressive - as we would have expected from Poots and Eisenberg - with Senan Jennings' turn as the strange child being memorably unnerving and peculiar.
After a single viewing, I have to say I have already become rather a champion for this little gem, written by Garret Shanley who shares credit for the story with director Lorcan Finnegan.
I know Vivarium will only appeal to a small percentage of the movie-watching audience, but for me I was hanging on every clue that our protagonists acquired about their "captors", trying to piece together my own ideas of who was "on the other side of the glass".