CLOCK - Mark Reviews Movies

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 27, 2023

Some people simply don't want children, and there are other people who simply cannot comprehend that idea. That's the foundation of the conflict in Clock, the debut feature of writer/director Alexis Jacknow, and it's taken to excesses of messaging and genre conventions in this awkwardly written and staged psychological thriller.

The basics of the plot revolve around Ella Patel (Dianna Agron), an interior designer with what seems to be the perfect life—because it basically is. She's good at and respected in her job. Her marriage to Aidan (Jay Ali), a successful doctor, is filled with affection and regular, satisfying sex. She has luxurious house with a pool and a fancy car and a budget for routine pampering at a spa, along with plenty of other comforts, and we know all of this because Jacknow gives us a montage of all of the activities that occupy Ella's day.

It's prompted by one of her friends asking what Ella could possibly do all day if she doesn't have any kids. It's a regular question, apparently, from her pals, all of whom either have children of assorted ages or are pregnant with the first or next one. Their utter and continued disbelief at Ella's assertion that she and Aidan are happy enough on their own and don't want children starts to make one wonder exactly how any of these characters are friends in the first place.

This is the kind of movie that doesn't care about consistency or logic or establishing any kind of believable characters, because the message is really the point. The message here, of course, is that society puts a lot of pressure on women to become mothers, so the friends exist, much like every other character in this story, to make that point as clear as possible—and far beyond that, too.

The friends continue to be shocked every time Ella dismisses the idea of having kids. A trip to a new doctor informs her that, at 37, she's in the years of a "geriatric pregnancy," so if she wants kids, she'd better start now. Meanwhile, Ella's father Joseph (Saul Rubinek) adds a thick layer of guilt upon her choice, by repeatedly bringing up that his daughter owes it to him, her ancestors (which includes Holocaust survivors), and Jewish people in general to continue the family line. It's all the man talks about, really, and that's how we know it's an important point.

Anyway, all of the pressure eventually gets to Ella, who suggests to her husband that they should try to have a kid because all of the pressure is just becoming too much for her, but this isn't a convincing argument for Aidan. Instead of trying to convince him or just trying to confront all of her doubters in general, Ella decides to quit her job and participate in an experimental medical trial, which uses hormonal treatments, therapy, and invasive surgery to activate the "biological clock" in women who aren't interested in having kids.

Ignore that Elizabeth (Melora Hardin), the doctor running the trial, obviously has some ulterior motive for doing all of this, even if the movie never really cares to explain it. Forget that Ella has certain superstitions and fears that stem directly from being the descendant of survivors of the Shoah but somehow doesn't think twice about volunteering for a secretive medical experiment.

Forget that all of the medication and therapy treatments exist for Ella to start having hallucinations that give us some cheap jump scares involving a shadowy figure and a third-act revelation that offers some unlikely, thematically inconsistent consequences. Definitely ignore that one of the movie's big twists contradicts what a character does or doesn't do in the first act—or makes said character unbelievably picky—just so that there can be another twist at the end.

None of the specifics here add up in a convincing way. That's also true of Jacknow's dialogue (on-the-nose to the point that characters phrase things in a clumsy way, such as a character figuratively asking where Ella has gone, just for the response to explain something, as in Ella literally saying where she went) and the approach to the style of the material, which goes for a bit of the surreal but mainly just comes across as laughably over-the-top. Agron does what she can with a character whose only purpose is to be a pawn of the plot and the point, but the material leaves her flailing. Clock only makes sense in the context of it forcing its main point, regardless of how nonsensical everything else becomes.

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