The Clinic (2010) - 3/4

There's nothing in and of itself wrong with being derivative. One could call Shakespeare derivative, as he readily cobbled together story elements from other writers. The Clinic, telling the story of a pregnant woman abducted and c-sectioned while her husband frantically tries to find her, is such a cobbling; but the result is so good and nearly the equal of the films it borrows from that it's worth forgiving. But first, let's look at a little history of ideas.

Over two thousand years ago, Plato indicated genetic attachment as one of the biggest problems in society. In The Republic, Plato, in describing his perfect society, does not allow children to know their parents or parents to know their children; the adults care for all children and the children obey all adults. However much we like to dress it up and glamourize it as the moving strength of a parent willing to sacrifice all to save her child, we know now that this impulse is purely selfish: we're hardwired to protect our genetic information and it's in our children that our own genetic information is being passed along. However valuable the family system is for certain social functions, the extremely plausible events in The Clinic makes Plato seem all the more justified.

The Clinic concerns a mad scientist of sorts who arranges to have pregnant women kidnapped from the local motel and brought to the abattoir. The fetuses are there removed by c-section and the mothers are stitched up and left to fend for themselves in the fenced-in compound. They wake up in an ice bath and learn the key to finding their baby may lie in the stitched-up abdomens of their fellow inmates. Mayhem ensues.

The scenario is absurd, of course, but the way it plays out is eminently plausible. While most of the women, including our protagonist, pull together and try to help each other--one of them is even a surgeon, making the solution extremely simple--one of the mothers stalks the others like a panther, dividing and brutally massacring them whenever she can. How can she justify this? For her baby, of course! A mother would do anything for her baby. What about the other mothers? And what about the other babies? Well, they're not as important as HER baby. She doesn't know why. It's just because it's hers. That's the attitude entailed by genetic attachment: anyone or anything can be sacrificed for the sake of your baby. I'm not sure whether it's the pure selfishness of it or the irrationality of such a total lack of empathy that makes it so infuriating. Why should anyone else care about your baby? Out of pure human kindness, one might answer and correctly; and that power to empathize with others equally is precisely what Plato felt would flourish best without genetic attachment.

Of course, the other women want their children just as much as the murderous mother. They just have a much stronger sense of empathy. And perhaps they realize, in this sort of Hobbesian all-against-all scenario the mad scientist has set up, that working together makes one much stronger than physical prowess and weapons. They have a much better chance of finding their own children if they can all find their own children together.

On the other hand, what made Plato's society so chilling is the genetic meritocracy he set up. He wholeheartedly subscribed to a eugenics program that bred and educated some children as leaders, some as warriors, and the rest as servants. Any too weak to even be servants were left to die. This fault of genetic detachment is also represented in the film, then, in the person of the scientist. Her detachment, it's implied, arises from a contempt for her own mentally slow child. I can't go further into either argument, however, without giving spoilers. Suffice to say, the film presents considerable food for thought on these subjects. What's the balance between Mother Bears and Human Cattle?

Despite all this talk of Plato and genetics, The Clinic is by no means an arthouse film. While not striving to be a 'grindhouse' or 'drive-in' picture of any sort, this is still a true exploitation flick--Ozsploitation, to be exact. With women in prison, women fighting each other, abdomens torn open, vicious dogs, nasty Australian hicks, mad scientists, and several other atrocities explicit or implicit, The Clinic provides ample material for a horrorhound seeking a good time. There's no need to have read a lick of Plato.

First-time writer-director James Rabbitts delivers with both adequate direction and a smart script. Though the script is doubtless derived from two successful, recent, horror films, Hostel and Inside, it replicates to some degree the edge of Hostel's social criticism and the disgust-power of Inside. (There's just something about a womb that we feel in our bodies to be sacrosanct.) The series of twists that hit us at the climax are surprising and yet consistent with all we see, which is really all that's asked for in a twist. Hopefully we'll see more from Rabbitts in the future--and hopefully next time with more original material.