Review: The Clearing (2020)
I watched this film so you would not have to.
I had some higher expectations than I usually do, that was mostly brcause it's been a while since the last decent zombie movie came out. So let me present my disappointment.
Characters and their father-daughter relationship are the means of forming sympathy in audience. However, the film portrays the main character as being annoyed with his daughter and he is shown as more of an abusive parent type, than a loving father. Thus the playing on feelings using their detachment and trying to rebuild some bond between them is not working, because you just don't believe this psychopath who made his daughter feel like she only would be loved if she were a boy.
Oh and all these flashbacks to one day before do not fit here. They should have taken this chronologically, to make us form some relative bond with characters and make us care for them.
Generally, characters are stupid and act absurd. Besides that, the main character apparently ate too much spinach because he can survive anything and not even zombies want to bite him... not even when his fighting them with bare hands... not even when one of them keeps hanging locked around his neck for like ten minutes... why would zombies bite anyway, right?
As for the costumes, the 'zombie' masks are terrible. The people just look like football vandals gone mad after their favorite team lost a match. But yes there are worms sticking out of their face so I guess that makes them zombie enough. But there is no gore, no blood, which is off within this subgenre. Ok maybe the worms get you feeling a bit unsettled and stuff, but generally, the scenes where there should have been blood are lacking any sort of tension precisely because two things: 1.zombies resemble people way too much to be perceived as zombies and they do not act according any pattern (they seem to be drawn in by noise, but they won't leave when you are silent, they can jump on a roof of your van, but only in one scene within the entire film, etc.) 2.you can loose your limb in a fight for your life and get eaten by zombies and yet there is no damn blood...
The film is supposed to be more of an action horror I believe, but there is no gradation of the action and the plot just seems to be the same fighting scene on repeat. No development, no tension building, nothing.
Oh and you get to listen to heavy breathing and moaning of the actor for way too long and even I would have gone crazy and become a zombie if I were exposed to it for any longer.
This film is pathetic. Just take any zombie movie ever with lowest possible budget and make it make sense hundred times less than the worst one you have seen and boom that's The Clearing.
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