NIGHTSTREAM Film Review: Clearcut
By: Joseph Perry (Twitter - Uphill Both Ways Podcast)
Canadian folk horror feature Clearcut (1991) is an unflinching statement on both the mistreatment of First Nations people by private industry and government forces and the titular destruction of forest land.
The anger of lawyer Peter Maguire (Ron Lea), who failed to block a lumber company’s access to the land of First Nations people, manifests during a ritual in the form of Arthur (Graham Greene of Dances with Wolves), who is actually a trickster of indigenous people’s legends. While Maguire tries to take the legal approach to halting the lumber mill work headed up by Bud Rickets (Michael Hogan), Arthur takes a more direct and far more violent approach when he kidnaps both Hogan and Maguire and takes them on a torturous, treacherous trek through the forest that Ricket’s mill is destroying. No one is safe from Arthur’s vengeance, as some graphic practical effects and plentiful moments of hand-wringing suspense prove.
Polish director Ryszard Bugaski cranks up the tension from the beginning and rarely lets viewers take a breather. Greene is absolutely terrific as a literal force of nature, Lea gives a fine performance as the conflicted attorney who wants to help the indigenous people but who both sides accuse of getting paid whether he wins or loses, and Hogan plays the arrogant, unsympathetic mill owner well. Along with folk horror, Clearcut also deals in survival horror. It’s a powerful piece of cinema that hasn’t lost any of its edge since its initial release.
Clearcut screened in the Retro section of the online NIGHSTREAM film festival, which ran October 7–13, 2021.
Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/) and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom).
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