Clock

So, up front, I’m gonna spend a lot of time talking about Clock’s messaging, because it is fundamental to the story and to why this movie is what it is. Full disclosure, I come to this movie as a father of three, so I am neither a woman, nor a person without children, so I do not personally understand either pressure this movie seeks to talk about. Furthermore, the movie was written and directed by a woman. But I know mixed messaging and poorly delivered messages when I see them. And that’s the problem with Clock: the message it’s trying to say, and the message it is saying, are so jumbled, so botched, and buried in a poorly thought out movie, that any impact or value is lost. So, spoilers ahoy. Ella is married, very successful in her field, approaching the end of her 30’s, and is the only friend in her circle with no kids. She seems terrified or grossed out by pregnancy, and apprehensive of kids, but she seems to want to want them. Her dad wants grandkids to carry on their Jewish family heritage (I mention it because the movie mentions repeatedly and at great length). Her friends do the “when are you going to” routine, go on about how it is the ultimate and only thing a woman should aspire to because it fulfills you and gives a woman purpose, and even belittle the idea of what she could possibly do all day without them (which is work, cook, do leisurely activities, and have great sex without working around children, otherwise called enjoying her life). Her husband wants kids, but is fine not having them, but all the pressure makes her feel lesser than, so she goes to an experimental clinic that promises to “fix” the lack of desire to have kids (or, as the movie calls or, “fixing the broken biological clock). But the treatment goes awry, and thus, the horror part sets in Right off the bat, it’s hard to take the movie’s messaging seriously when it conflates the concept of a biological clock and maternal feelings. The former is slang for the amount of time a woman is ABLE to have a baby. The latter is about the emotional desire to have a baby. Yes, Ella is in her late 30’s, so there is an element of the clock ticking from a viability standpoint, but that’s not Ella’s issue. She doesn’t WANT them. That’s emotional. The movie seems to think it’s biological before Ella even gets to the clinic, which makes it hard to take seriously that the movie will be able to fashion any kind of reasonable message about its topic. And that fear is borne out the longer the movie goes. Friends are almost cruel in the way they taunt her; one, who is pregnant and in a same-sex relationship, says that Ella has it easy because all she had to do is “spread her legs”, which is not only grossly insensitive to the emotional aspect of motherhood, but clueless to people with infertility issues. Her father relentlessly bangs a drum about keeping the family heritage alive and how it’s disrespectful to her elders who survived the Holocaust to not have children. It’s good that the movie paints them as manipulative or crass, but when the entire premise of the movie is Ella trying to “fix” something society is telling her is “broken”, and she never feels like she truly buys into the treatment even when it is “working”, and she just decides later on to resist the treatment despite medication and an implant pumping her full of hormones … it all feels so flippant and contrived. And then there’s the climax, where the madness Ella is experiencing causes her to do some stuff that’s way outside the bounds. Are we supposed to think the pressures of society that are put upon the childless can be so toxic, they can drive someone to commit crimes? What does that say about the person who doesn’t want kids, that their sanity is so precariously teetering on an edge of committing heinous, destructive criminal acts because their friends won’t STFU about kids? I get that it’s a horror movie so the situation has to be dialed up, but when the entire purpose of the movie is to make a statement, the statement needs to be either clear and direct, or allegorical. When you do the former right, you get something like Fresh, or The Menu. The latter, Night Of The Living Dead, or Candyman 1990. This is neither of those, and while it isn’t blatantly obnoxious like Black Christmas 2019, it’s so muddled and self-sabotaging, it renders the message meaningless. It can’t even get basic things right; it turns out she is manipulated into going to the clinic by her husband (don’t worry, it’s so obvious, even the clinically brain dead could see it coming) because he doesn’t want to pressure her but he does want kids. Lying is bad, absolutely. But Ella lies about even going to the clinic, telling him it’s a business trip. So, his lying is bad, but hers is okay? Is the movie really saying it’s okay because, if all had gone well, the end would’ve justified the means? On top of all those issues is the contradictory presentation of Ella and the message itself. As I mentioned before, Ella is presented as wanting to want to have a baby. Being at her friend's baby shower, she looks like she's overcome with a feeling of outsider. Ella comes off as feeling like she's missing a piece of an emotional puzzle and can't find it, not as someone who has made a life decision and is being harangued by outside pressures. There's a sorrow and a sadness to her, not because she keeps hearing it from all sides and has grown weary from the pressure, but because she's searching for an explanation as to why she doesn't feel the way she thinks she should. Even when she and her husband have a bit of an argument early on about it and she tries to rationalize her position, it sounds more like she's trying to convince herself than she actually believes it. If Clock was about a woman longing to want kids but not feeling that maternal pull and seeking out a fix that turns toxic on her, okay, we have a movie. If Ella was resolute in her desire not to have kids and went through with the clinic so she could close the door once and for all, but it ended up breaking her will in a terrifying way, okay, we have a movie. And in both of those cases, the messaging this movie wants to have can still be there, and it would be 100% more effective, because the messaging, the plot, and the character are all aligned. Instead, we get the movie saying one thing, Ella doing another, and the dissonance ruins the movie's messaging. And this doesn’t even cover logistical issues the movie can’t reconcile, like how apparently no woman yet has reported the dangerous side effects of the treatment, despite the movie showing us the treatment results in total madness. Hell, at the end, it is shown how the women are experiencing side effects in the clinic, under supervision, and there doesn’t seem to be any concern. There should be alarm bells being rung and investigations, but nope. And the clinic is a trial, but the aftercare is a phone call, which is plot convenience at its finest. There’s the mechanics of the implant, which make no sense; it’s got a sharp, outward facing point, and it’ll be in there forever, and in the first three weeks, it could cause injury to a lover, but after three weeks, it’s fine. And it’s about the size of a watch face, but removal would cause permanent infertility. What? How? How all of this?!? And it’s a shame because the message this movie is going for, and the idea of turning the societal pressure of having a baby, seems like it would be good ground for a horror movie. But it just never comes together like the director intended. Add in some stock horror tropes, and you have a movie that feels held down by its own design. It could be intelligent and incisive and be a positive movie for childless women, but instead, it uses them to deliver a message that comes out a gibberish.