I cleared out my Hulu watchlist with this trio of films that all revolve around women and their bodies. Let’s get right into them.
Clock (2023)
The problem with so much elevated horror, aka: trauma porn, aka: stuff that’s usually found exclusively on Shudder but somehow found its way onto Hulu this time, is that in its effort to be smart and thought-provoking, often it completely loses focus. Of course the other issue is that it’s rarely worthy of the horror genre.
This feminist film perfectly captures the horror of being a woman pressured by everyone around her to have a baby even when she’s totally fulfilled without one. But in the end it’s just a confusing Stepford Wives/Rosemary’s Baby concept with a bogus boogey woman, a nod to the movie Teeth, lots of spider imagery, and some nasty birthing and fetus visuals.
Quinn from Glee plays the happy motherless wife, but she eventually caves and does everything she can to get her biological clock ticking. Adding to her mental state is the pressure from her father, a man of Jewish faith.
Quinn decides to voluntarily check into an unorthodox pregnancy clinic that is supposed to have great success with breaking through stubborn uteruses.
And that’s when Quinn begins pretty much losing her mind and living in a stress-induced world of delusions. Sure there’s plenty of disturbing body horror that will most likely traumatize females specifically, but the film makes sure to give males reason to grab their crotches protectively as well.
SHE WILL (2021)
Watching this movie is like taking a women’s studies class with a Wiccan lesson thrown in for good measure. It’s all about female empowerment, bodily autonomy, and Mother Earth…and it makes little use of the familiar names in the cast.
Horror queen Alice Krige plays an aging actress who has had a double mastectomy. She goes on a country retreat with her nurse, who she treats horribly.
The retreat is run by Rupert Everett, but his presence is irrelevant.
Alice starts having dreams of dancing around fires in the woods with other women. She acquires the power to harm shitty men. In an underdeveloped plot line, she seeks revenge on Malcolm McDowell, a famous director who had a questionable relationship with her when she was a child actress. The decision to make this storyline understated could be so as not to feed into the energy of it, which would take the control away from the female perspective. Did that assessment make me sound smart?
We get repeated witchy imagery in the woods, a few more men get harmed, Alice makes amends with her nurse, demonstrating that women need to lift each other up, Alice comes to accept her flawed body, and Alice finally goes to finish what she started with Malcolm—who is essentially playing the slime ball his Dr. Loomis character became in Rob Zombie’s Halloween II.
Bottom line—this is essentially an art house film with witchcraft subtext.
THE OFFERING (2022)
As basic and filled with cheap scares as this one is, it’s totally horror with an awesome demon, and it’s my favorite of this bunch. In other words, I liked it because it’s basic and filled with cheap scares.
The focus is on a man and his pregnant wife coming to stay with his Hasidic father, who runs and lives in a Jewish funeral home.
After the father and son work together on a corpse that comes in, the wife begins experiencing unnerving situations in the house.
Unfortunately, the scares begin with a dream sequence. Ugh. You need to prepare for those types of cheap scares, because they are what you get here.
Which is why the freaky demon is so satisfying…it’s more substantial than the predictably timed noises and orchestral stingers that bombard us.
It’s a classic template as the couple delves into the strange occurrences, which are all steeped in Jewish occult themes. And of course the goal is to save their unborn child. It might be predictable, but the battle with the beast is loads of fun, and there’s even a scene reminiscent of the Elm Street 4 looping moment.
