When eight-year-old Sara (Lily LaTorre) meets a girl named Amy (Julia Savage) on the bank of an Australian road at the starting scene of The Clearing, Sara know who she really is. She even spells her name, so her new acquaintance won't get it wrong. At the end of the episode, she will fight to maintain that identity.
While talking to Amy, Sara is put into a plain white van driven by an older boy who shares Amy's long peroxide blonde hair. They both are looking like the creepy kids , as all the other kids in the compound where she is taken against her desire. But it seems to be a extraterrestrial origin. Like the uniforms worn by all the residents of Sara's new home, hair is part of the de rigueur look for a group known as the Kindred. Soon, Sara's hair will look the same, and she will have a new name to go with it: Asha.
Creators: Matt Cameron, Elise McCredie
Stars: Teresa Palmer, Guy Pearce, Erroll Shand
Adapted from the 2019 novel In the Clearing by J.P. Pomare, this eight-part miniseries is based on the real-life Australian cult known as The Family, a well-funded organization run by Anne Hamilton-Byrne, a yoga teacher-turned-spiritualist whose compound was raided in 1987, her fugitives they recounted stories of abuse, mind control and hazing involving massive doses of LSD, all under the direction of Hamilton-Byrne, who claimed to be their mother (which she was able to do in part because of Australia's then-lax adoption laws). . Each episode of The Clearing begins with a disclaimer that it is a work of fiction inspired by fact, but the details of cult life seen in the three episodes given to critics, chilling as they are, are not. they exaggerate the claims of the cult's survivors.
The series is made up of two threads. In the first, Amy is tasked with familiarizing Asha with life with the Kindred, despite her growing doubts about the place and Asha's unwavering resistance to accepting her new identity, even after a phone conversation with the leader of the Kindred. group, Adrienne (Miranda Otto), who sweet talks herself as "Asha's" mother and tells her that she has been waiting for her. In the second, a single mother named Freya (Teresa Palmer) raises her son as she grows increasingly anxious thanks to news of a missing child and the white van that seems to follow them wherever they go.
In the final scene of the first episode, the series has clarified the connections between the threads (information withheld by the novel for a later point). The reveal turns a lot of assumptions on its head, particularly about Freya, playing a character who at first seems like a struggling mother trying to do the best she can in a different light. Later episodes will further complicate this description, as they delve deeper into the workings of the Kindred. That she's even creepier than she appears at first isn't exactly a spoiler; the series doesn't stop at describing the horrific existence of Kindred children or the sadism of abuse used to keep them in line.
Co-creators Elise McCredie and Matt Cameron maintain a leisurely pace, but what the series gains in atmosphere it loses in urgency. At its best, The Clearing takes on a dreamlike tone, locked in the false reality created by Adrienne and her followers. But sometimes the reverie feels languid. In some stretches, there seems to be nothing driving the story forward between eruptions of drama, such as a visit from the police who send the children of Kindred into hiding in fear of "blue devils" who might take them.
However, a strong cast helps balance that trend. Otto is appropriately creepy as Adrienne, conveying the cult leader's fearsome wrath, but also her charm that allows her to win the support of wealthy patrons. Palmer is especially good as Freya, making the character feel cohesive even as new details about her emerge. (The ever-welcome Guy Pearce is also on hand as a key Kindred figure.) Though sometimes these first few episodes play out like a procedural stretched out over more episodes than necessary, the work of the cast and the fascinating and repulsive story that inspired the series make it compelling. enough to suggest that it will be worth moving forward with the rest of the series. Just don't expect, given how closely these early episodes stick to the facts of the case, that it will come off as less awkward.
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