What appears to be an intriguing and well-acted movie is totally spoiled for me in an instant when Wayne strangles Arnold in an attempt to escape (at 1h 10min in the movie), then turns his back on him so that the semi-dead Arnold can 'surprisingly' come to life again, immediately finds his gun somewhere down in the mud pool, and regains control of the situation. Whatever realism or credibility the director has built in the past hour, is for me immediately lost in that scene. Why do (US?) audiences always put up with the crappy idea of 'the killer suddenly coming back to life again', and why do directors always make heroes look the other way when they make this happen? What an unforgivably cheap trick. For this reason only, my rating falls back from 8 to 5.
Review of The Clearing
