The Clearing is a fictionalised account of The Family,the Melbourne cult led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne.Credit:Narelle Portanier/Disney+
Based on the 2020 novelIn The Clearing by J.P. Pomare,The Clearing is a fictionalised take on the cult that burst into the public eye in 1987 when police raided its large bush property in the Dandenongs,taking into protective custody half a dozen children dressed in identical clothing,all with dyed blonde hair.
They had been adopted as babies,raised as if they were Hamilton-Byrne’s natural children,and beaten,starved and dosed with LSD in a bid to encourage them towards full consciousness.
The Clearing takes those basic elements and weaves from them a moody,slow-burn thriller about one woman’s attempts to cast off the legacy of a childhood of cult-ordained abuse.
Freya (Teresa Palmer) appears at first glance to be an unnaturally and unreasonably anxious mother,always seeming to detect in passing cars the potential for her son Billy to be abducted. But her paranoia is not without basis;as a child,she was a cult member known as Amy (Julia Savage),and had a hand in just such a terrible act.
As in Pomare’s novel,the story here is bifurcated:we get Amy’s tale and we get Freya’s. Biologically,it’s the same person. Psychologically … well,that’s more complex.
Freya is the post-liberation version of Amy,but can a person ever really shake off the damage wrought by years in a cult,raised under the tough-love regime of a woman like Adrienne Beaufort (Miranda Otto),a perfectly coiffed and manicured monster?