‘Clock’ Evaluate: That Organic Ticking Is Now a Time Bomb

Ella (Dianna Agron) has a profitable profession as an inside designer, with spare time for afternoon intercourse together with her good-looking, loving husband (Jay Ali) and volunteer work. The solely cloud over this good image is that Ella doesn’t need youngsters, and feels dangerous about not feeling dangerous about it.

Motherhood has lengthy been a significant topic of horror films, which have feasted on such themes as intimate invasion — the decision got here from contained in the womb! — and perception-distorting imbalances. The writer-director Alexis Jacknow incorporates these and extra, messily so, in her Hulu characteristic “Clock.”

Unmoored by conflicting impulses and wishes, Ella lastly offers in, largely to appease her widowed father (Saul Rubinek), a Holocaust survivor who begs her to maintain their household line alive. She enrolls in an experimental program that feels as if Goop had been dreamed up by David Cronenberg and is run by the alarmingly soothing Dr. Simmons (Melora Hardin). The remedy to make her extra receptive to having youngsters includes speak remedy, medicine and a mysterious intrauterine implant.

Agron, contemporary from a robust flip within the indie “Acidman,” anchors “Clock” with a restrained, histrionics-free efficiency considerably at odds with the movie’s perfunctory soar scares. “Clock” is a psychological thriller, or maybe even a satire, in horror clothes, tantalizing us with thought-provoking concepts, solely to desert them: nature versus nurture, the affect of the wellness-industrial complicated over minds and our bodies, the oppressive expectations positioned on ladies — together with by themselves. Most dramatically potent is the connection between Ella and her father, fraught with guilt. Alas, time runs out on that one, too.

Clock
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Hulu.