Tic-Tac: A Maternidade do Mal

Would not recommend it if you are looking for a good old horror movie. The movie had a decent setup, a few scary scenes, and the potential to be a great horror movie. However, halfway through, it seemed like the filmmakers decided to abandon the ghost/horror stuff and instead opted for a Disney fairy tale-like storyline with the usual message about how everyone is perfect, and there's nothing to fix. . Most people, including myself, expect a horror movie to be scary. Instead, this movie goes for social and political commentary that may be important, but not whats expected of a horror movie. If anything It was more cringeworthy than horror.

Clock is a film that could have been good. It has a solid premise and set-up, although some of the dialogue is a bit heavy handed. The acting is solid - Agron is a great lead. However, the plot is completely scattershot and by the end the film has lost sight of whatever point it was trying to make. It constantly shifts gears, and in the second half piles on plot developments that really amount to nothing. Which is a shame because I think if it picked a lane and fleshed that out it could've been a really tight and engaging film. It's also devoid of any scares - though one scene at a birthday produced some solid tension.

This Psychological horror about a woman running out on her biological clock and falling prey to the peer pressure to have a baby. She decides undergo an experimental study where she is promised to overcome her fears and fix her broken biological clock to ensure her pregnancy well by triggering her need to have a baby. The fear she has stems from her family's past and her own mindset where she feels just not ready yet. But is the procedure she signed up for, devoid of negative side effects? How does it impact her and her life forms rest of the story.

This is truly an intriguing concept and there are unsettling scenes. The problem is the pace is rather too slow and despite those key scenes which do work, the film as a whole simply doesn't. The peer pressure to have a kid is understandable but those scenes weren't established properly as Ella's dynamics with her friends wasn't etched well. The same thing happens with the family and much of it is told verbally. The unsettling scenes don't scare. The ending however was indeed good. Needed a much tighter narrative to leave an impact.

Despite what some of the reviewers say...yes. There are some very insightful things that are addressed in the story. But it doesn't pay off in the end, in my opinion. It's a bit confused, i think...part of it a commentary on child bearing/rearing and part of it a horror story. But i don't feel the two blended well...maybe in two or three rewrites, but it felt like it was still a work in progress and found itself needing an ending which wasn't at all satisfying. Just a 'let's do this and get it over with' type last act...the first two acts were enjoyable, though. And endings are difficult. But important.

A talented interior designer struggling with her biological clock(and her family, friends and society insisting that she get a kid) agrees to a clinical trial to fix it, and things take a turn for the worse.

This is a highly effective piece of elevated horror. There's some incredibly visceral gore. It's only 85 and a half minutes long if you don't count the end credits, and I understand why some say that it should have been an episode of an anthology series like Twilight Zone instead. If it were even 10 minutes longer I would be saying it should be trimmed. Diana Agron delivers an amazing performance as Ella, the protagonist. Honestly, it's worth watching at least once just to experience that. The visual metaphors are very obvious and a little of the thematic material is repeated maybe one or two times too many - "my name is Dr Elizabeth Simmons" especially.

It is very much the product of the Jewish 30-something female writer-director Alexis Jacknow, exploring the anxiety felt especially by her and people in the same situation. Part of this is seen in how it incorporates the Holocaust, fears that it might be repeated, and Jewish guilt. Some have felt that it mishandled Shoah, I disagree. I found it to be appropriate, in good taste, and I think when something so awful happens to a people they should have a lot of freedom in examining what it does to them.

I recommend this to anyone who wants something that honestly looks at the pressures to reproduce and all of the concerns that come with. 7/10.