You will feel a little pinch
Clock is a Sci-Fi Horror 2023 film directed by Alexis Jacknow.
Ella Patel (Dianna Agron) is happily married to a surgeon, has a great career as an interior designer and a fulfilling life. All she is lacking is children, or rather, the desire to have them, despite pressure from her friends and family. Her doctor reminds her that at 37, her biological clock is ticking. Ella follows her doctor's suggestion to enroll in a clinical trial that takes place in a mysterious, remote facility.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, counting down the tropes present
- All Lesbians Want Kids: The very pregnant Shauna is tired of hearing Ella go on about how a desire for babies is not natural for her. She points out that all Ella has to do is spread her legs to get pregnant, while Shauna and her wife had to struggle to make it happen.
- Animal Motif: Spiders (dead and alive) are present in Ella's hallucinations. She sees a huge tarantula crawl across Shauna's pregnant belly and nearly squashes it flat with a book.
- Big "SHUT UP!": Ella's father calls her after he takes a fall at home. She goes to him but once she is there, her hallucination of the sound of a clicking clock restarts, shutting out Joseph's voice. She breaks down and yells "Shut the FUCK up" at her father's grandfather clock.
- Feeling the Baby Kick: At a baby shower, a pregnant friend, Shauna, invites Ella to do this. Ella declines after seeing the baby's foot press from inside Shauna's belly. Shauna chides her, saying it's a baby and not an alien.
- Foreshadowing:
- In the very first scene, Ella eats a deviled egg at the baby shower. Later on, after her stay at the clinic, she finds herself eating raw eggs right from the pan. And later, she finds she put the eggs in the freezer and eats one.
- Joseph talks about their very first ancestors being the fish that first crawled out of the ocean. One of those appears in the final scene.
- After a Jump Scare with the Very Tall Woman, Ella stops the car, runs to a cliff and vomits. That is the very same cliff she jumps from after the sheriffs catch her.
- Gainax Ending: Ella gets caught by the sheriffs, but gets away while still handcuffed and jumps off a cliff. The last scene is her lying unhurt, cuffs off, on a rock by the shore, watching a fish with little legs crawl out of the sea.
- Groin Attack: Happens to Aidan, when he tries to have intercourse with Ella prior to the three weeks stipulated by Dr. Simmons and gets cut by her uterine implant. We even get to see his bloody penis.
- Gross Up Closeup: Ella seduces Aidan and they decide to have sex, overlooking Dr. Simmons's instructions for Ella to wait three weeks after having the implant inserted. He ends up getting cut by the implant. The audience gets a closeup at the cut.
- Hallucinations: A side effect of the drug regime. Ella keeps seeing a Very Tall Woman (who looks like her grandmother did after being liberated from a concentration camp) and spiders. She also hears a clock ticking.
- The Holocaust: Ella's grandparents are Holocaust survivors. It is what motivates her father to pressure her to have children: it is important to him to continue the family line and honor those who died in the Holocaust, and she is an only child so it falls on her. From a review
:"Ella vocalizes the many reasons a woman may not want to bring a child into the world, but the most remarkable scene is her explaining how honoring Holocaust survivors through childbearing has less to do with them and more with the fear of it happening again." - Institutional Apparel: As soon as Ella checks in the clinic, the receptionist takes away her luggage, so the only clothes available are clinic-issued pink pajamas, slippers, and a nightgown and bathrobe. All the other patients are dressed like her.
- I Want Grandkids: Ella and Aidan have Ella's father over for Sabbath dinner, who compliments her on her cooking and their life, but laments the empty chairs on account of them being childfree.
- Medical Horror: Essentially, everything done to Ella to "cure" her lack of desire to have children: the meds that bring on psychotic breaks, the implant, the gaslighting.
- My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Ella's friends and family treat her like a freak for not wanting kids. She tells her OB/GYN she doesn't feel ready to have children and Dr. Webber reminds her that at 37, her pregnancy would medically be considered "geriatric". She eventually asks how to fix a broken bio clock.
- Not Wanting Kids Is Weird: Everyone treats Ella like this, to the point where Ella agrees to enter a clinical trial that supposedly will "fix" her "broken" biological clock.
- Parental Neglect: During the baby shower a little boy is climbing a really tall tree. Ella tries to ask her friends whose kid is he, but they are too busy badgering her about not wanting kids to notice him. The kid ends up falling off the tree.
- Self-Surgery: Ella does this after Dr. Simmons refuses to remove the implant. Despite being warned that it would leave her infertile, Ella grabs some pliers and pulls it out right there in the clinic's dining room.
- Skip the Anesthetic: Ella rejects the Valium she is offered before Dr. Simmons inserts the implant.
- Smash the Symbol: Ella smashes her father's grandfather clock, the only belonging her grandparents were able to rescue after surviving the Holocaust. Hallucination again. Instead, she ripped out her father's entrails.
- Tagline: "It's counting down for a reason."
- Wham Shot: The clinic's Arc Symbol on Aidan's medical bag.
- You Can See That, Right?: Ella has this reaction when Dr. Simmons shows her some cards with ink blots on them, and she sees a grandfather clock, a Very Tall Woman, and a pile of dead spiders materialize from the ink blots.
