Standing before technicolor stained glass, her golden curls gleaming, Adrienne Beaufort (Miranda Otto) resembles a saint. She preaches her gospel to a room full of acolytes, decrying materialism and urging the washing away of sin. Then she showcases what might one day be the crowning achievement of her spiritual movement: her family of nearly a dozen children. Most of them have had their hair dyed platinum blond and chopped into harsh bangs and bobs—crude reflections of Adrienne’s own exquisite styling. “They are as pure and untainted as it is possible to be,” Adrienne says to the crowd. “A generation raised away from the suffocating rules of society. Nurtured under the most perfect conditions.”
Adapted by Matt Cameron and Elise McCredie from J.P. Pomare’s 2019 novel In the Clearing, Hulu’s The Clearing is inspired by the real-life Australian cult known as “The Family,” which operated in the latter half of the 20th century. The story begins with Adrienne’s lackeys abducting a young girl named Sara (Lily LaTorre) and taking her to Blackmarsh, the boggy manor that serves as the group’s base of operations. There, Sara meets her new brothers and sisters, who were brought into the cult through similarly illegal but less conspicuous means. Adrienne entrusts the project of Sara’s acclimation to Amy (Julia Savage), a teen whose sympathy for Sara and devotion to Adrienne quickly become difficult to reconcile.
It comes as no surprise that Adrienne’s presentation to her followers varnishes the state of affairs at Blackmarsh, where the matriarch’s inner circle rules in her frequent absence. The cult’s ultimate motivations remain murky in the three episodes provided to critics for review, but The Clearing’s early goings offer intriguing glimpses into the relationships that these figures have to Adrienne and their shared work. Where the gentle, attentive presence of Henrik Wilczek (Erroll Shand) suggests genuine love for the children, Tamsin Latham (Kate Mulvany) appears to find cruel satisfaction in her role inflicting violent discipline on them.
Though Adrienne spends little time with her family, she nonetheless feels omnipresent, as her stranglehold on the cult members’ lives and imaginations is absolute. The kids eagerly await her visits and aspire to earn her pride—and dread the consequences of her disappointment. In one rending scene, Tamsin beats Amy as punishment for Sara’s misbehavior. She does so in front of a phone, with Adrienne on the other end of the line. Amy grunts and grits her teeth, but her physical pain is eclipsed by the torment of having failed her mother.
The series depicts its events in two distinct periods: the era of the cult’s peak, when its members kidnapped Sara, and decades after its downfall. In the present, another child disappears, causing Freya (Teresa Palmer), who has some connection to the cult, to worry that the group has reformed. While TV often deploys split timelines to feign narrative depth and spring gimmicky twists, The Clearing’s temporal structure deftly elucidates the cult’s devastating legacy.
Freya’s profound trauma courses through every scene she’s in. She flinches at noises in the dark, her eyes never seeming to rest. The home that she shares with her young son, Billy (Flynn Wandin), is secluded and filled with window walls, functioning less as a sanctuary than a fortress with clear views of potential danger. Across the series, each cut from the past to the present leaves a new scar on Adrienne’s victims, the ellipsis haunted by untold horrors.
The specters looming over Freya take shape in the landscape surrounding her, where trees jut out of bodies of water like the pleading arms of someone drowning. In The Clearing’s opening shot, Freya floats, shoulder-deep, in a lake. She takes a deep breath and submerges herself, and, seconds later, the surface bears no trace of her presence. This brief, mesmerizing scene establishes the penetrating sense of foreboding that permeates the series, which skillfully conveys the ease with which one can disappear, never to return.
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