Clock review.
Clock is a descent into madness movie. It’s made a bit more interesting by a fantastic lead performance and a clever application of its central concept. It doesn’t quite stick the landing…but it’s worth the jump.
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Clock
Directed by Alexis Jacknow
Screenplay by Alexis Jacknow
Starring Dianna Agron, Jay Ali, Melora Hardin and Saul Rubinek
Clock Review
Hulu has stepped back into the original horror movie game with Clock. Dianna Agron stars as a woman who doesn’t want children…and thinks that might be a medical issue. Societal pressures lead her to a clinical trial to fix her biological clock.
Clock is a psychological horror film. Ella (Agron) becomes haunted by horrific imagery. Most notably, a tall woman appears to her at the creepiest possible times. It’s the film’s most effective image. It works every time it’s deployed. We come to learn the backstory of the tall woman as the story unfolds. Clock does a good job of meshing the horror and the story behind it together.
What makes Clock really tick (I apologize) is Agron’s performance. She takes us from comfortable to all out terror. From happy life to full descent into madness. Her performance of the decline is the heart of the movie. Agron is equally good at the dismissive eyerolls towards the pressure put on her to conform to societal norms as she is with the more difficult portrayal of a woman who has lost her mind.
Ella is under pressure from friends and family to have a child. This is, largely, played for satire. If there is one thing that Clock could have done to easily propel itself from good to great…it would have been to lean harder into this idea. A script that better showed Ella’s growing internal conflict in the face of over-the-top societal pressure could have been a classic. What we get works. It works well enough to notice when it’s gone.
The bulk of Clock happens after Ella has decided to undergo experimental treatment for her perceived illness. The illness…of not wanting children. The entire concept is ripe for satire…but Clock mostly turns towards the psychological trauma Ella suffers because of the experiment. This path makes for a good movie (again because of Agron’s performance) …sustaining the heightened commentary alongside of it could have given us something more unique.
The connective tissue between Ella’s happiness with her life and choosing to pursue the experiment is somewhat lacking. She’s under pressure from her friend group who have all started families…and from her father who wants her to carry on the family line…but she doesn’t seem moved enough by them to attempt chemistry altering, life changing therapy. She walks away from her dream job to make time for the clinic. While we see her demeanor and thought process change because of the clinic…Clock doesn’t do as good of a job making us believe she would make this choice beforehand. More of the societal satire could have helped there too.
What Clock banks on is you believing that Ella is open to the idea that living a fulfilling life without children is a sickness. How could she not want what her friends and family want? What is making her act in this abnormal way? It’s just a consultation, after all. Maybe it can be fixed. It doesn’t quite pull together as it should…luckily the horror imagery begins quickly afterwards, and Clock has enough fun with Ella’s mental state to traverse the weakened bridge.
The good news is that Clock is an engaging and entertaining watch…mostly thanks to Agron. The story has some effective character moments mixed in with memorable imagery. The messaging of the movie is sometimes muddled…characters switch opinions with little to no storyline reason for them to have done so. That, combined with selling short the entertainment value of its social satire, keeps Clock from being a truly great movie. Instead…we have a good movie that falls a bit short on what it’s trying to say. It is very good at capturing one woman’s psychological horror in the face of an inability to conform to societal norms. And Agron plays it for all it’s worth.
Scare Value
Clock has some very good horror imagery and Agron plays her character’s unraveling perfectly. There are some very good ideas beneath the surface. They aren’t always unearthed to full potential. A good movie that misses its opportunities at greatness. More than anything Clock needed to focus on a secondary idea to round it out. A heavier dose of satire could have made this Hulu original truly stand out.
3/5
Clock Link
Streaming on Hulu
Clock Trailer
If you enjoyed this review of Clock, check out Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva
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