The Clearing, Disney+’s first Australian original scripted series, features strangely appealing leaders and ritual-following disciples, and it’s scarier than your ordinary production since it’s aimed at kids. Series co-director Jeffrey Walker opens with a woman drowning in a misty lake, then cuts to the terrifying kidnapping of Sara (Lily LaTorre), an eight-year-old girl, from the side of the road. She is taken to Blackmarsh, a farm in rural Victoria, and coerced into a cult led by the charismatic and debonair Adrienne (Miranda Otto), who wants to raise children that are “pure and untainted… away from the suffocating rules of society”.
Adrienne achieves this purported innocence by isolating the children from the outside world (hence, no Bluey), starving them, dosing them with LSD, and uniformly dressing and cutting each of them in a manner reminiscent of the children in the film Village of the Damned. The show’s creators, Matt Cameron, and Elise McCredie, took their cue from JP Pomare’s novel In the Clearing, which was in turn inspired by the true story of the cult The Family.
The Clearing Release Date
On May 24, 2023, Hulu will debut The Clearing, a new psychological thriller series based on a book. The series will also be available on Disney+ on the same day in other non-US regions like Australia, Argentina, and others.
The Clearing Plot
The teaser for The Clearing left viewers with a lot of questions and few assumptions. Here is our review of the new Hulu trailer: The plot takes place in Australia, and it follows a cult headed by a lady named Adrienne (played by Miranda Otto), who abducts a group of young girls and makes them live together. Despite the cult’s stated mission to “purify” the young women, one can’t help but wonder what kind of atrocities these unfortunate victims have endured at the hands of the cult’s members.
Nothing seems to be happening right for the distraught parents as the search for the missing youngsters continues outside. A strange woman, portrayed by Teresa Palmer, with ties to the cult from her past steps forward to help locate the missing girls, perhaps to spare them the same trauma she had at their hands. The prospect of facing her past because of this choice gives her chills. Will the scant evidence she finds be enough to free the girls from the crazed cult and return them to their parents?
The series creates an eerie atmosphere reminiscent of legendary masterpieces like Race With the Devil, The Devil Rides Out, and The Wicker Man, and is guaranteed to keep viewers guessing until the very end.
The Clearing Cast
- Teresa Palmer as Freya
- Miranda Otto as Adrienne
- Guy Pearce as Dr. Bryce Latham
- Julia Savage as Amy
- Hazem Shammas as Yusuf Joe Saad
- Kate Mulvany as Tamsin Latham
- Xavier Samuel as Colin Garrison
- Anna Lise Phillips as Hannah Wilczek
- Mark Coles Smith as Wayne Dhurrkay
- Harry Greenwood as Anton Beaufort
- Erroll Shand as Henrik Wilczek
- Doris Younane as Christine
- Claudia Karvan as Mariam Herzog
- Miah Madden as Max Dhurrkay
- Gary Sweet as Wilkes
Where can I watch The Clearing?
The Clearing is an original series produced by Hulu that will premiere exclusively on Hulu in the United States. This psychological suspense series is only available in the United States on Disney+, although it may be accessed from outside the country by using the Star Hub.
A Hulu subscription grants you unrestricted access to the service’s extensive catalog of TV shows, movies, and more. You can select between their Standard or Premium package. The Premium Plan costs $12.99 per month and does not include advertisements, whereas the Basic Plan is $6.99 per month and does include advertisements. A package that includes Hulu, ESPN, and Disney+ may be purchased for $69.99 per month.
How many episodes are in The Clearing?
The first season of Clearing will have eight parts. Fans should know that following the premiere episode (which will be a double-length program), new episodes will be made available every Wednesday.
Is The Clearing based on a true story?
While the cult known as “The Family” did exist and achieve notoriety in Australia in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the events depicted in the TV show “The Clearing” are based on a dramatized description of cult life written by author JP Pomare and titled “In The Clearing.”
Many members of the local medical community were early participants in what would become known as “The Family,” an organization that encouraged religious and philosophical debates among its members. Nonetheless, the group’s controversial leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne, began to experiment with psychiatric medicines before she gained 14 children in mysterious circumstances.
The Clearing Review
Her appearance is measured, at least in the first few episodes (those that were made available for review). We anticipate the show’s great moments of cult craziness, but at first, Walker and Otto’s half-sister Gracie Otto regard Adrienne like the shark from Jaws: scarier in theory than in practice. Guy Pearce’s understated turn as cult member Dr. Bryce Latham adds to the film’s impression that its big names aren’t being utilized to their full potential.
Teresa Palmer, a skilled performer with an uncanny ability to convey a sense of foreboding without resorting to cliches, gives the best performance of the program. She portrays Freya, as a single mother who is terrified for her son’s safety after hearing about the aforementioned abduction. Freya has a unique perspective on the story because she is situated on the inside and the outside of the cult for reasons I won’t get into.
The Clearing’s first two episodes show that it will not live up to Durkin’s film, and the distancing effect of the temporal jumps only adds to this. A moist, gluggy, sticky look is conjured by Walker (whose credits include Lambs of God, a terrific cultish drama) and Gracie Otto (whose repertoire includes episodes of Heartbreak High and Bump). The show is gloomy and professionally made, but it lacks the atmospheric wow factor of The Gloaming, a recent Australian series that likewise ventured into cultishness and fanaticism.