Zeit der Finsternis

I want to warn the people who by any means happened to face this movie.

I really regret that I watched it and I will have to get rid of many not-very-pleasant-at-all pictures which got stuck in my mind. I don't understand this urge to show corpses in such details. Maybe that happens because authors didn't have any other tool to influence the level of watcher's adrenalin, but to me it brought only incredible disgusting feeling and I went out from cinema with the clear desire to clean my mind from this watching. And that's not only because of the corpses. I hate speculations on the theme of religion and culture, but when a Russian director does it and in such a shallow way – it's just unbearable. I honestly was trying to find any idea in the story, but unfortunately – didn't manage. Yes, I want to take the responsibility to say that there is no idea there, no philosophy, only the realistic pictures of unrestrained sins and killing.

My vote is not "1" (awful) just because of the beautiful girls running all over the screen. Kinda good advertising for Russian brides.

But I can't recommend this movie to anyone anyway. It poisons the mind. It is consciousness-murderous.

This capsule review was originally written and published (in an actual newspaper - remember those?) in August, 1993, when this film was released/dumped on home video in Canada by Astral Video:

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George Segal must've been on vacation (or lost) in Russia when he made this hooter-heavy exercise in medieval nonsense. As the only cast member not dubbed, Segal plays this widower who protects his neighbourhood mystic (Tamara Tana) from a bunch of barbaric villagers convinced she murdered a virgin at the annual Summer Moon Sex Picnic. Though the box sells it like a family-save adventure movie, The Clearing earns an R-rating for some serious skin and violence. That said, it's still kinda neat.