Cameron (Whitfield) and his pregnant fiancée Beth (Bethell) are traveling through the Australian outback on the way to spending Christmas with Beth’s parents. After a run-in with a van that forces them off the road, the couple decides to spend the night at a rundown roadside motel. The stubbornly (or stupidly) ignore all of the signs which should tell them to get in their car and drive as fast as they can? Creepy motel clerk? Check. Swimming pool littered with discarded kid’s toys? Check. Weird foreign couple that stares at them. Check. Couple still decides to spend the night? Check. OK so these are not the smartest people around. While Beth is sleeping Cameron decides to head out for a late night snack. When he returns he find Beth missing. The cops are summoned and Cameron immediately blames the motel clerk as he ogled Beth when they checked in. Cameron is taken into custody when he attacks the clerk and of course you know by now its one of THOSE movies where everyone is in on the conspiracy.
Beth awakens in an abandoned industrial facility. She’s lying in a bathtub filled with ice and finds a large c-section stitching in her stomach…her baby has been removed! Beth soon meets four other women, all who’ve had their babies removed surgically. As they scour the facility they find their babies only they are locked up and none of the women knows which baby is theirs. Each baby has a color-coded tag. And there’s one other problem…there are five women and six babies. Who is the mother of the last infant and where is she?
The film is set in 1979 and a trailer points out that this is before DNA testing. Yet in the end this fact proves absolutely meaningless and just goes to point out one of the many problems and inconsistencies with the story. It’s set in 1979 so we don’t have to worry about anyone using the clichéd no signal for the cell phone plot device. Yet other than telling us it’s 1979 there’s little to convince us of that fact. Clothing and hairstyles are completely modern. How are newborn infants able to survive in cages without anyone keeping an eye on them? Even healthy infants born in modern hospitals need to be observed and monitored. How is it that women who have just had C-sections performed on them are able to run around this large facility, even out-running guard dogs? I had my gall bladder out and I was on the couch for a week! Why would Cameron be dumb enough to leave his wife alone being that far pregnant, especially in such an out of the way setting? And where was he expecting to find an open restaurant at 3:00 am in town of around 500? And what happened to the husbands of all other women? Why are there so many pregnant women passing through such a tiny town all at once? I could forever.
All of this pales next to the folly of the film’s main plot once it’s revealed. Laughable is an understatement. We’re told that the film is “inspired by true events.” Ok…if the true event is that at one point a couple was driving through the Outback over Christmas then I can buy it. Otherwise its just a poorly constructed take on “Turistas” or other such films. Whitfield is an incredible actor as demonstrated by his role in Spartacus but here he is completely wasted. He’s given very little to do and virtually disappears half way through in a sloppy manner.
Bethell (Legend of the Seeker) is the star of the film by far and its only real bright spot. Despite the absurdity of the story she attacks her role with fervor and resiliency and she’s fun to watch. Unfortunately there’s just too many things wrong with The Clinic to overlook.
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Yikes. Thankfully my Australian film was good... Griff the Invisible ~Robert