The Clinic and A Parent's Nightmare: A Movie Review

Director/writer: James Rabbitts.

It is amazing how many first time directors begin in horror. Australian director James Rabbitts is the latest filmmaker to try this genre and succeed. His tale, The Clinic, is a tense time spent with a group of mothers, who are forced into a sort of mommy cage match. The antagonists are many and the film has a lot of advantages going its way. Despite the disposable "based on a true story" label, The Clinic manages to exploit certain innate fears of parenthood, while re-introducing the topic of eugenics into horror.

The plotline begins simply with a couple travelling to Beth's (Tabrett Bethell) parents for Christmas. They have been recently engaged and actor Andy Whitfield (Spartacus) plays the expectant father. This reviewer knew he had seen Whitfield before. That aside, the tension begins early when a blacked out ambulance nearly knocks this couple off the road. A local motelier is not much friendlier, when he charges a room rate for the unborn child. Then, Whitfield's character Cameron leaves his wife in the middle of the night to find something to eat. Predictably, Cameron finds nothing, but he is distracted long enough for his fiance to have become missing.

Later, Beth wakes up in a bath of ice. Soon she notices that she has received an I-section to remove her baby and now the mommy cage match begins. Grab your scalpels folks, because this will be a bloody ride to the top of the heap. You see, a pair of villains has taken Darwin's speech: "it is not the strongest of the species that survives [but] the one that is the most adaptable to change," a little too far. Beth proves herself to be forerunner by leading a group of girls to find their stolen babies. Then some strangeness enters the picture whereby each woman attempts to discover their baby's identity through a simple set of tags. Murder, self surgery and all sorts of ridiculousness takes place, before a clever finale.

*spoiler territory ahead folks.

The mommy cage match is really only undertaken by one of the mothers, who is encouraged to murder the other moms to save her child. The setting in which the film takes place, a cattle processing plant, leaves all sorts of places to hide and for killers to pop out from. The film is often dark and the night shots create a little too much darkness. Meanwhile, the mothers are being whittled down in dank basements and on operating tables. The atmosphere is truly horrific, despite other reviewers scoffing at the scares e.g. Scott Weinberg. The motivations of the characters are believable. However, the way the mothers go about achieving their goal of escaping this impromtu maternity while rescuing their baby does come off as absurd, more often than not.

Rabbitts picks at the core of his story this ancient theory of eugenics. These theories are loosely tied to Darwin's The Origins of Species and the phrase "survival of the fittest." However, eugenic scientists took these theories away from science and into the realm of discrimination e.g. World War II. In The Clinic, unqualified mothers find a bloody demise, along with their children. This is truly macabre territory and thankfully many of the theories involving eugenics were left behind in the 20th Century.

The Clinic is an imaginative ride through a lot of mothers' worst nightmare. This feature will push some parent's buttons, as Beth does her best to save her child and her life. Cameron is mostly a sidetrack, while much of the suspense is derived from the hidden motives of the antagonists. This truly is fiction, despite Rabbitts' assertion that this is based on true stories. How many baby abductions centers are currently running in Australia? In the end, this reviewer enjoyed this title from start to finish, with only some darkly lit night shots hampering the journey to a parent's hell and back.

Writing/story/plot: 8 (a good script, original, good characters, lots of tension).
Setting/atmosphere/effect: 7.5 (the stages are usually full of menace or looming tension).

Overall: 7.75 out of 10 (horror fans should definitely see this one).

Scott Weinberg, the desensitized reviewer, finds few scares in The Clinic:

The Clinic Reviewed at Fearnet

Another review of this title at Film Critics United (Christopher Armstead):

The Clinic Reviewed at FCU

The Clinic on Facebook:

The Clinic at Facebook

Released on DVD August 9th in rated and unrated versions:



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Posted in: abducted,abduction,australia,childhood trauma,children,kidnap,kidnapped,movie review,movie review 2011