'Clock' provides plenty of reasons to feel uneasy
Hulu
Confront societal expectations about having kids and you’re already dealing with weightier subject matter than the usual psychological thriller. Then underscore that with echoes of the Holocaust and a Jewish main character who simultaneously recognizes the importance of continuing to grow her family while also remaining fearful about bringing a child into a world that can be so horrible? It’s clear that “Clock” is a long way from an average streaming effort seeking only to make a lot of loud noises in the dark, and all the better for it.
Ella (an impressive Dianna Agron of “Glee”) is surrounded by friends having babies (which provides the already-successful interior designer with even more potential clients seeking customized nurseries), a husband (Jay Ali) who may or may not be truthful in saying he’s happy just being with her, and a dad (Saul Rubinek) who can’t fathom why she wouldn’t give him a grandchild. Finally, while everyone else thinks she’s at a big job, Ella sneaks off to an experimental treatment center where Dr. Simmons (Melora Hardin of “The Office”!) claims she can reverse the perspective of someone who doesn’t want a baby.
Where many horror-adjacent movies can struggle evoking much of anything in the viewer, “Clock” continually succeeds at creating a feeling of destabilization. From a startling background image toward the beginning to a sensory experience that nearly overwhelms Ella beyond repair, writer-director Alexis Jacknow has both ideas and the skill to execute them in examining a character who is already at war with society in macro and micro, as well as her own feelings about her life and body — and that’s all without any of the destabilizing factors that come with pregnancy. “Clock” doesn’t attempt to speak to all the reasons people do or don’t want kids but absolutely taps into the difficult dynamics that can occur any time people don’t listen to an opposing perspective.
So it’s alarming in a different way each time “Clock” seems to resort to things like spiders or the eerie appearances of a likely imagined “tall woman,” apparently out of obligation rather than inspiration. It doesn’t seem like being haunted by the past so much as haunted by the requisite elements of psychological breakdown, and the movie is lesser for it.
Yet it’s also not easy to find a movie of this sort where there are ideas to wade through from beginning to end, including a final section that can inspire much debate about Dr. Simmons’ program, the origin of Ella’s fears and more. Some might call it overly open-ended; I say it’s the proper uncertainty for issues that are anything but binary.
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