[REVIEW] Overlook Film Festival: Clock
Produced by David Worthen Brooks, Arbi Pedrossian, and Jenna Cavelle of 20th Digital Studio, Clock leaves a very large stain on you. It lingers long after the closing of the film and keeps seeping further into you. It’s a strong film that is heavy with color and gripping sound design, but what makes the film grab you is truly the writing. Jacknow wrote an incredibly evocative film that is relevant and terrifying–because it is real life!
Ella Patel (Dianna Agron), a successful interior designer with a very happy marriage, is questioned incessantly about when she’ll have her own child. She is happy with her decision to not have children until the line of questioning becomes too much. She begins to feel maybe her decision isn’t the best one and is doubting herself. Even her father Joseph’s (played by Saul Rubinek) voice joins in the chorus of ridicule, albeit his comes from a place of love, and she finally decides that maybe something is wrong with her. After a visit to an OGBYN at the behest of her husband Aidan (Jay Ali), she receives information on a program that is under trial testing, one that will look at her “problem” as a fertility issue, treating it with synthetic hormones and intense cognitive-behavioral therapy. She wants to know that her biological “clock” isn’t broken and to feel “normal”.
She forgoes a job that she had planned in advance to go to the facility where the study and treatment will take place in hopes that this will work, and that she will start to feel like she wants a family of her own. When she arrives and is starting to get treated by Dr. Simmons (Melora Hardin), she has hallucinations, seeing images that seem to symoblize different things or people in her life. The most impactful part of the treatment is the tank where she is forced to watch a video with images of childbirth at their most gruesome (especially a baby being pulled out of the mother via c-section, covered in blood and sac fluid). This is meant to help Ella face her fear of giving birth due to horror stories she has heard from her friends who have gone through childbirth. Once the images become too much, Ella screams for her release out of the tank, seeing a tall, dark woman that scares her to the point of her getting injured. Dr. Simmons tells Ella that the treatment is working when Ella is ready to leave, feeling unsafe. And it was indeed working.
Ella returns home with strict instructions of no sexual intercourse for three weeks and to take the hormone pills from the treatment every day without missing a day. She begins to follow the instructions, but Ella starts exhibiting strange behavior (eating raw eggs, continuing hallucinations) that scares her best friend. The treatment has interrupted her career, her friendships, and her relationship. And before the end of the film, it ultimately stops her life just when she starts to feel that yearning, that intrusive longing for a baby.
Clock is a visceral look into the nightmare of facing ridicule for not feeling like having a baby. It hits home due to reproductive rights being threatened today, putting women in grave danger should they need to seek termination of pregnancy due to health issues or personal reasons that are solely the right of the woman. Being made to feel like something is “wrong” with you because of a choice you’ve made is a horror story all its own when the long line of questioning starts. Ella’s character finally giving into the notion that every woman wants a child, she just has a broken clock is the story that a lot of women tell, but they’re shamed for it. The film holds a mirror up to those societal norms that vilify women who take charge of their body and their reproductive choices by not allowing those rules to take over their lives. It left a lasting impression and is a great conversation piece.
Clock is a psychological horror that casts a large shadow and leaves room for thought. It’s also a beautiful film and you hardly notice that when Ella goes into the treatment center that she lost the vibrancy of her life, it only returns when she removes the piece that was blocking her from experiencing her life in full color. However, it didn’t come without a grave cost to Ella.
Clock premiered the 2023 Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans, soon to be viewed by all.
