IN VITRO - Mark Reviews Movies

In Vitro, Saban Films

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | June 26, 2025

Everything about In Vitro, from co-writers and co-directors Will Howarth and Tom McKeith, is so grounded in a sense of a reality that it almost feels disingenuous to point out that it's science fiction. This story is, however, in a very obvious way, because it deals with technology that doesn't yet exist but genuinely seems as if it could in a matter of years.

Instead of focusing on the particulars of that tech, the screenplay, also co-written by star Talia Zucker, uses it as a springboard for a story about characters who feel real and a plot that generates plenty of tension and mystery. Through it all, there's also a foundation of ideas that address the basic humanity of and the terrifying potential for inhumanity in its premise.

The narrative revolves around Layla (Zucker), a farmer's wife and farmworker herself who lives on a remote cattle ranch in Australia. Their business, as well as the gimmick of the plot, involves the cloning or, as it's called in this world to probably make it seem less frightening, replication of cows.

In this near-future, food is scarce as the world's population grows, and animal replication means that people could have better access to real meat instead of an alternative created in a laboratory. If people saw what the farm's own process looks like, they might think it's quite lab-like itself, with big pools in a barn, each one containing a cow in statis as it's presumably being generated or maturing. If the possibility of mass starvation can't get people to change their dietary habits, one imagines those same people probably don't care how the cows are cloned.

Anyway, Jack (Ashley Zukerman), the owner of the farm, seems to have made a good business with this technology. Delivery driver Brady (Howarth) comes by on a regular schedule to transport herds of cattle from the ranch to the slaughterhouse.

With this established, the film sets up three potential conflicts. The first is that some of the replicated cows are showing signs of liver failure, as their eyes are yellow, they start coughing up blood or bile or some other fluid, and they collapse to the ground. Another is that something or someone might be messing with the farm, since Layla awakens in the middle of the night to the sound of gunshots. It's just her husband in the cloning facility, and while he says a couple of the cows got loose and need to be scared away before trampling him, Layla's suspicious.

That's because of the third and most important element of drama here: the relationship between this wife and husband. Their bond seems normal and even fine at first, as they work together and wake up in bed with him holding her close. Something's off, though, in some subtle ways, such as a dinner table scene in which they sit apart and don't seem to have much to say to each other. Jack also responds strangely when Layla decides to paint their son's bedroom. He's currently at a boarding school, and the boy's mother is excited for when he'll finally return.

Finally, there's a moment in which Jack tries to have sex with Layla, and after she says she's tired, he goes silent, turns off the light, and lies down with his back to her. One could call it disappointment, except for how the scene unfolds from there.

There is a big secret on the farm, and it has to do with, well, everything that's so plainly and subtly established by the screenplay. Let's just say that there's at least one other character at play in the story, and given the premise, one can probably guess the nature of that character—or, at least, have something very close to an approximation of a guess.

What develops from that revelation is a clever battle of wits among the married couple, each of whom knows something—or several things—the other doesn't, that transforms into a game of cat-and-mouse, as well as a more traditional but subdued chase. That's all plotting, though, and Howarth and McKeith stage those sequences, such some hide-and-seek in a barn and a nighttime scene on the side of the road where a character is certain someone is out in the darkness, with quiet suspense. The stakes keep escalating, as more and more is revealed about the central relationship, who or what these characters are, and how much is really being hidden here.

Because so much of this is a legitimate surprise, it's important to talk around the specifics, even though a significant part of the truth is disclosed at the end of the first act. What's more vital to the film's success, however, is that the script doesn't merely coast on its twists, turns, and suspense setups.

That marriage, for example, feels specifically established and naturally portrayed, meaning that everything within this plot becomes an extension of and a way to further the development of that relationship. On her own, Layla, too, is a fascinating character, beyond whatever gimmick might be guiding her role in this story. Indeed, the entire scheme of this narrative gets at deeper questions about identity, what gives a person a sense of individuality, and how to find purpose and meaning in an existence that might not be all that it seems.

There are rewards to In Vitro that are difficult to describe without giving away too much but that also do make this a richer, more thoughtful experience than it might seem. Its firm foundation in its characters and its ideas, instead of its plot mechanics and trickery, make sure of that.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products