User Reviews

Greetings again from the darkness. This one has been on my radar since the Sundance Festival and all the raves about Elizabeth Olsen's performance. After attending a screening last evening, I find myself at a loss to adequately describe not just her stunning turn, but also this unusual film from writer/director Sean Durkin.

On the surface, this sounds like just another movie peeking inside a creepy cult that brainwashes, and psychologically and physically abuses women, and is led by a charismatic (and creepy) religious style figure-head. There are many similarities to the Manson-family story of which much has been published, but Mr. Durkin takes the film in a much different and very creative direction by concentrating on what happens to Martha (Olsen) after she escapes the cult.

In the Q&A, Durkin states he did much research and found the most fascinating story to be that of a cult escapee and what she went through during her first three weeks of freedom. Martha sneaks out early one morning and places a panic call to her older sister, whom she hasn't communicated with in two years. Settling in to the lake house with big sis and new brother-in-law, it becomes quite obvious that Martha doesn't know how to fit in society and has absolutely no interest in discussing her recent past.

The sister is played very well by Sarah Paulson, and her husband is Hugh Dancy (so very good in Adam). This seemingly normal yuppie couple is trying to do right by Martha, but the fits of paranoia, outbursts of anger, and societal goofs are just too much for them.

The genius of this film is in the story telling. The cinematic toggling between today and moments of time at the cult farm house leads the viewer right into the confused mind of Martha. We don't get much back story but it's obvious she was "ripe" for cult world when she was chosen. We see how Patrick, the quietly charismatic leader, sings her a song and steals her heart ... she wants so much to belong. We also see how she bonds with the other women at the farm house, and ends up in a situation that seems to snap her out just enough so she finds the strength to leave. The editing of scenes between these two worlds in outstanding and serve to keep the viewer glued to the screen.

Last year I raved about an independent film called Winter's Bone. I chose it as one of the year's best and it ended with some industry award recognition. I am not willing to say this film is quite at that level, but I will say that the younger sister of the Olsen twins, Elizabeth, delivers an incredible first feature film performance and Sean Durkin deserves an audience for his first feature film as writer/director. Another bond between the two indies is that John Hawkes plays the cult leader Patrick, and Hawkes was a standout in Winter's Bone.

There will undoubtedly be some debate about whether this is cutting edge independent filmmaking or just another snooty art-house mind-messer. All I can say is, I hope the film grabs enough audience for the debate to matter ... it deserves it.

Even the title "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is so boring that most thriller audiences will fall asleep before they finish reading it. But before you click away in search of Saw IX, consider this question: Which is more powerful, a bunch of quick forgettable shocks, or a slow intensifying charge that builds up over 102 minutes? M.M.M.M. definitely takes the latter approach, slowly seeping under your skin, never quite giving you the cathartic release of a good zap, but overall delivering just as much power as any popcorn-spilling slasher, but in a very different way.

And yes, I purposely used the analogy of slow electrical torture because that may be how it feels to some of you. It may feel frustrating, annoying, outright boring and torturous, but if you like your movies on the slower, more cryptic, artistic side, then I guarantee you won't be disappointed. So let's hope my 1st two paragraphs were enough to help you make a decision on whether or not to watch this flick. I'll be the first to admit that some days I'm just not in the mood for "2001: A Space Odyssey" and I'd rather just pop in... Saw IX.

Yay you're still here. Ok here's what you can expect if you choose to watch M.M.M.M. It's the story of a young, late-teen, early-20s girl who escapes a bizarre cult commune, and now she's attempting to adjust to a normal existence. Mystery surrounds her, as she doesn't want to talk to anyone about it (brushing it off with a manufactured lie about some ex-boyfriend), and we the audience are kept in the dark for almost half the film. Why was she there? What did they do to her? Are they hunting her down? Perhaps stalking or planning to kill her?

There are no quick answers, but instead the film jumps back & forth between 2 timelines: the current one after she escaped, and the past one where she is slowly being initiated into the cult. And in order to get a grasp of what's going on, you really have to watch the whole 102 minute experience.

But as suspenseful and powerful as the plot is, that's not the point. The point is to draw us, the audience, into the mind of a person who's suffering severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And it accomplishes that masterfully. This is not some Hollywood cliché about PTSD, but it's a complex, heavy, powerful depiction of the anxiety, delusion, paranoia and growing madness of someone who is haunted by ghosts that just won't go away.

Elizabeth Olsen absolutely knocks it out of the park with her performance. Her approach is very layered: on the surface she acts like it's no big deal and that she's a normal person in control of her life, but she frequently exhibits bizarre "socially unacceptable" behavior prompting others to wonder "what the hell is wrong with her??" even though she herself doesn't understand what she did wrong. At the same time you can feel the rising tension and paranoia, especially as the timeline cuts back to darker & more disturbing episodes, and even though there aren't any car chases and chainsaws, we start to feel every bit of her disturbing, confuse existence.

If this slow, powerful approach to cinema appeals to you, then don't hesitate to check out M.M.M.M. I would group it alongside other slow, "uneventful" psychological films like "Shadows & Lies" with James Franco, "Ginger and Rosa" with Elle Fanning, or maybe even the iconic Soderbergh flick "Sex, Lies & Videotape". All of these movies are somewhat slow, heavy and extremely non-Hollywood but they deliver a powerful shock that you won't soon forget.

I'm tempted to give Martha Marcy May Marlene a higher rating than it deserves for what it could have been, not for what it is. It boasts two young talents who are showing tons of potential - director Sean Durkin and lead actress Elizabeth Olsen; Olsen's performance is subtle and effective, and Durkin's directorial work creates a strong sense of atmosphere, which is aided by the superb cinematography of Jody Lee Lipes (who also had very little prior experience in feature length films). It's a film that looks and sounds great, but unfortunately it doesn't mesh into a satisfying experience.

It's probably because there's so much potential and so much to explore, and so little of it is actually brought to fruition, that I left the film with a bitter taste of a missed opportunity. The cult, for example, is fascinating, seductive and nightmarish, and John Hawkes delivers outstandingly, but on closer inspection it looks like a perfectly generic hippie cult of the classic Manson prototype, and we get no hints of what their philosophy actually is, or about the personalities of any of the members. The same goes for the relationship between Martha, her sister and her brother in law, and most of all the ending, which suggests some very interesting subjects which the rest of the movie doesn't really explore.

To be clear: I don't object to open endings or films that leave a lot of information out to allow viewer interpretation, but in this case I felt it was done as a cover up for lack of decision on Durkin's part - a flawed script that doesn't really feel complete. I'll definitely check out his work in the future, but this film isn't quite there yet.

I'd never heard of this and when scrolling to find a movie it popped up.

A slow, intense, psychological character study. There are some distressing scenes (sexual assault, violence) that were acted brilliantly.

The silence throughout the movie added to the intensity and put the viewer firmly into the mindset of the main character (Martha), who was excellently portrayed by Elizabeth Olsen.

Sarah Paulson (I should add I am biased towards her as she is an exquisite human) added depth and a gentleness that was required for the character of Martha to explore her situation in the scenes between them.

The aspect and post production on this was beautiful, the lighting throughout was spot on. The way that many scenes in the 'cult' were in near darkness contrasting to the light filled space once she left gave excellent visual cues and a sense of the tumultuous emotions being felt by Martha.

Would definitely watch again to see if there were background things I've missed.

Beautifully written movie! Elizabeth Olsen as always was just a dream in this. Really Traumatic, and realistic depiction of harm that can be done by a violent cult!

Moments after the credits began, I knew Elizabeth Olsen was destined for the Oscar red carpet for her work in Martha Marcy May Marlene. It was a quiet thriller I knew very little about content wise before hand, but knew all about the acclaim it has received since premiering at Sundance and Cannes earlier this year. When it came to the Toronto International Film Festival, it was one of the first films I clamoured for tickets for. And now I know why.

Martha (Olsen) has fled an abusive cult lead by Patrick (John Hawkes). After years of being off-the-grid, she calls her estranged sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) to pick her up from a bus shelter. Lucy brings her to the lakeside cottage she shares with her new husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), where they are to spend some much needed time away from their lives in the city. But as Martha tries to adjust back to a normal life, she is continually haunted by the memories of her life in the cult.

I was initially underwhelmed walking out of Sean Durkin's debut feature, loving Olsen's performance but not much else. But as the days have gone on, I continually find myself obsessing on every moment of Martha Marcy May Marlene. Despite the backwoods feel and its atmospheric similarities to last year's Best Picture nominee Winter's Bone, this film is just simply unmissable. It is deeply unsettling throughout, and one of the few films that succeed in making the audience deeply uncomfortable. I usually find myself shifting in my seat from boredom. Here, I was shifting just because of how quietly terrified and incredibly disgusted I was with what was going on on-screen. It is a moody piece, but one that sticks with you and scares you more every time you talk and think about it. And it is that feeling, that earnest inner torment that keeps bringing me back and appreciating it more and more.

Durkin brilliantly frames the film in a similar vein to Memento, jumping back and forth between Martha at her sister's cottage in the present and her life in the cult in the past. He weaves in and out of the timelines with care, never once confusing the audience. We simply watch as Martha tries to get on with her life, but keeps finding things that remind her of moments she spent in the cult. He frames the story entirely around her, allowing her unreliability to throw the story into off-putting and disturbing directions. I found myself simply stunned by some of the unbelievable things that occur without warning. Nothing too horrific physically happens, but Durkin makes the implications of what is even more so. More impressive is how no one thing in the film feels insignificant. They all just add up on top of each other magnificently, and help drive the paranoia that plagues Martha from scene to scene, just as much if not more than it does for the audience.

Olsen has appeared in a few films before her work here, but this is an incredibly impressive true debut film for her. Her performance is simply unbelievable and unmissable. Watching her transformation from naïve teenager to paranoid, PTSD victim on-screen is one of the few absolutely amazing moments of film we have had this year. It is made even better by the fact that the film is not even told in sequence, so we are forced to watch her navigate between the depictions with relative ease. Watching her character's arch blossom into something terrifying is something that has become truly rare for such a young, unaccomplished actress. But she makes it work, and forces the audience to never take their eyes off her. She just ups the ante with every scene, and undercuts every actor who she shares the screen with. She is magnetic, and commands the screen with such strength that you would never even pretend to imagine that she is related to the Olsen Twins. Whatever doubts I may have had about the film did not even come close to quashing her compelling and spectacular performance.

Hawkes continues to prove what a remarkable supporting player he is with his work as the leader of the cult. He is always frightening and nightmarish from the very beginning, but seeing him differing forms of sincerity make him a genuinely scary villain. We practically scream at the screen before and after what he puts Martha (or as he calls her, Marcy May) through, and his performance is one of the key reasons why the film is so vividly unsettling. Watching Hawkes playing the guitar and serenading her with a tune he wrote "about her", may go down as one of the most horrific scenes in film history.

Paulson and Dancy do a fairly great job in their thankless roles as Martha's actual family. They help propel the film forward and make Olsen's role all the more fantastic, but I found that they were not given all that much to do outside of helping move the story forward. Paulson does get some very juicy moments, but I think their roles could have been all the better if they had so much more to do. They just seemed like mere plot devices more so than anything else.

While there is still something I still cannot quite describe that holds Martha Marcy May Marlene back from being the best film of the year, I cannot stop thinking about how powerful and great it really is. It is an ambiguous film that stays with you long after you leave the theatre and one that packs one of the single best performances of the year. This is an incredible directorial debut for Durkin, and an even better one for Olsen. Missing this film when it hits theatres is quite simply unacceptable.

8.5/10.

Sean Durkin's first feature is quite the trip. Durkin's sensibility as a director shines with this film, and shows undeniable promise. The really crazy thing about this film is that it's quietness is only juxtaposed by the really messed up things that are happening in the plot. An intriguing analytical mess of reality, memory, and fantasy, Martha Marcy May Marlene is about a paranoia, an extreme desire to escape the past, though it always comes back to haunt you. It is the isolation and the trouble that comes with that, that Martha really suffers from-- the cult has a certain way of thinking and the film geniously explores the psychological persuasion into a way of thinking…the way that the cult tries to make their ethics and morality universal is a terrifying, and intriguing thing. Elizabeth Olsen does a helluva job as Martha, giving her dewey eyed complexity, both bewilderment, shock, disgust, and intrigue. She gives quiet moments great momentum, and is an actress to keep an eye on. Jody Lee Lipes' cinematography is eerily distant and then uncomfortably close; the mixed bag reflects Martha's psyche in an interesting way. The scariest thing about Martha Marcy May Marlene is that it actually could happen. It may have even benefited from taking that dive a bit further, let us know just how paranoid and altered Martha is, and especially contrasting that with the old Martha, and the only complaint I might have is that we never get to see what the original Martha was like; it is only inferred as to why she would even accept and join this group in the first place, or what exactly she was running away from. But perhaps that makes the film only more intriguing—running away brought her to this society, and of course it looks fine on the outside, with it's acceptable living conditions and always a "family' of sorts around you. But, ah, there's always more than meets the eye. B+

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) is a character who has forgotten what it means to be normal. Marcy May is a character who has been taught to ignore social values and any definition of "normal." Martha and Marcy May is the same person and that's where the conflict lies. "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is a dramatic character study which edges towards psychological thriller.

Martha has run away from the hippie commune where she was living as Marcy May. She calls her sister. Lucy (Sarah Paulson) is worried but happy to help. With a good night's sleep, dinner and breakfast, and better clothes, Martha should be fine. But the longer she lives with her sister and brother-in-law (Hugh Dancy), the harder it is for her to separate memories from dreams, right from wrong, and good people from bad people.

Overall, the film is slow and silent, not usual traits for a psychological thriller. But concerns for Martha's mental health grow wildly. The character of Martha, Marcy May, and Marlene is just so endearing, she's somebody you want to care for. I'm not one for the hippie lifestyle or their false ideals (and I don't think the filmmaker is either) but Marcy May just embodied the innocence of it so beautifully. Olsen has this tender powerfulness that suited the character (or characters) perfectly; she made you hold on to her with her all-knowing eyes and earnest desire to understand who she is.

With a modest budget and a somewhat original way of showing madness mixing with sanity, shot and performed beautifully, "Martha Marcy May Marlene" should be in the running for all the major Independent Spirit Awards. As the first feature for both writer/director Sean Durkin and star Elizabeth Olsen, it certainly is a stunning debut.

Before you venture into the mind of "Martha Marcy May Marlene" I will leave you with a final thought. Marlene will not tell the truth; Martha doesn't tell the truth mostly because she can't because she doesn't know what it is anymore; Marcy May wants to tell the truth.

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) escapes from an abusive male-dominated communal cult where she lived as Marcy May. Her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) eagerly takes her in. Lucy is married to Ted (Hugh Dancy). She has difficulties reintegrating into the world despite her sister's efforts. The movie flashes back occasionally to her time with the charismatic leader Patrick (John Hawkes).

It was my first time seeing Elizabeth Olsen act and it was quite a good surprise. Other than being the younger sister to the twins, I wasn't really expecting to see this mature performance. The story has very disturbing sections with her in the cult. It's uncomfortable which a good indie sometimes becomes. It does need to be more consistent with its intensity. It's a bit too slow in a few places.

Had potential, and is mildly interesting throughout, but ultimately fails to deliver. Drags in places and has an anticlimactic conclusion.

Decent performances all round though.

There is plenty of potential in this movie. Great cinematography, good acting and an interesting plot about a young woman who lives with her sister after leaving a cult. It just moves too slowly. As a viewer, it's frustrating to have to sit through glacially sluggish, pretty shots of the actors staring out a window or across a lake. It's annoying. I guess they think it's poetic or artistic but - hello!!! - remember the audience?? Here we are! Often the sound, also, is poor. You can hardly hear the dialogue because they're going for some pretentious mood. But you miss entire chunks of conversations.The music, also, is overdone and intrusive. The movie needs more drive. Maybe a therapist for Martha? But sadly the director seems more intent on making everyone and everything look pretty than creating a dynamic and powerful film. Which this could easily have been.

This film got a lot of praise and was even described as one of the best films of 2011, after watching it I find it hard to see why people would say that.

The content is good, the story is of a girl trying to adapt back to normal life after escaping a cult. It is edited in a very clever way, with flashbacks to memories of the cult dotted throughout. Each flashback's beginning is similar to the real life situation. As the film progresses the flashbacks become longer and her reaction to them becomes more severe but this is as far as the film goes. Elizabeth Olsen was very good and this is a great debut for her. Other performances in the film were pretty weak and the storyline at some points can be weak too.

At some points it feels like the film is trying too hard to be unique. It deliberately doesn't explain certain things like why the sisters' lives went on such different paths perhaps because they wanted to leave so much of this film's content for the viewers to question. It just makes you more and more frustrated, especially when the credits begin to roll and you realise that there was no real climax or even a resolution worthy of making this film one of the best of 2011.

The way in which this film is shot is great, the saturated colour scheme portrays Martha's bleak perception of life and works wonders for the tone of the film.

Overall, this film would have been great if they had just finished the story. Elizabeth Olsen has proved her capabilities in this and hopefully will move onto better films. I would not really recommend this film, it's not a film anyone NEEDS to see but it's not terrible, the film is good but more would have been better.

What are cults? How do they work? As intriguing as that is to know, I don't think you'll come out of this knowing more on that. What this does though is getting into the head of our main actress and gives us a look on how a cult messes up a person and what that outfall can look and feel like.

And what better time to watch this, than after having finished Wandavision!? Exactly, none better than this. Did not know this was made 10 years ago. Never came around watching it and I am surprised by this as much as anyone. Apart from Olsen we also have Sarah Paulsen to name the other very famous female main character. The relationship those two have in stark contrast with what Olsen character had to go through ... flashbacks combined with what happens now ... confusing not just to Olsen, but also to everyone else aka the viewers.

This can be a straining viewing and it might not even come to a satisfying conclusion for many ... but it is very well made. Drama that has its own slow pace, but might touch you with its mystery and how it deals with pain and experience ...

This is an exercise in controlled emotional damage, channelling oblique hurt and social condemnation from Haneke, or softened from Bruno Dumont. It plays well for a debut, a studied work referencing 3 Women and Bergman's Glass Darkly among others, the result a carefully tuned psychologic thriller, but raises a few questions along the way.

It troubles me more because my primary interest in film just so happens to be Buddhist and linked with meditation as the means for a true perception into the nature of things.

What does it mean for example, that the philosophy of the character who looms the most elusive but enormous behind the whole sordid thing is based on a complete, foolish misunderstanding of the Buddhist nirvana? Of course we could wave away any such concern by falling back to exactly this sort of skewed understanding as the cause of so much pain, a harsh, selfish understanding of a selfless awareness with none of the boundless compassion that is primarily stressed in Buddhism, but we are clearly expected to use the worldview from this man to challenge the privilege and complacency of the couple having a spacious lake-house in Connecticut to retreat to just for the weekends. Why not swim in the nude, we're meant to ask this much. But does the filmmaker posit a horrible man or merely horribly understood, this much remains for our consideration.

It hinges all its power however on us being charmed along with Martha, then be appalled that we were, even as or exactly because there is too much Nietzche in John Hawkes' spiritual leader.

The whole idea here of course is that she is not simply damaged by an irrational world, here as well as there, but that we're not given any rational world to fall back to for the healing. Both worlds are called under scrutiny, each one secluded in its own microcosm. It makes for some cheap shots along the way.

Since this is, above all, a swim in the flotsam of a world falling apart, with less and less stable footing between the overlaps, it does well to work the way it does. We are meant to be baffled for easy answers. We're meant to not be able to tell ahead of time where we always land, say scrubbing what kitchen floor. With suffering a given response anywhere, we're meant to wonder even for a moment what microcosm is finally the more comforting, and then shudder that we did.

So in terms of structure it's dealt really well by the first-time filmmaker, let's see what he does; as our first go round the commune approach with trepidation a kind of soothing reverie about new exciting freedom and openness as dreamed and controlled by this man, himself equally soothing and strange, gradually allow the haze of nightmare to seep in, all the while fanning the fumes from the hallucination to distort the view and coherence of the safe haven above while troubling us that it may be in the same breath revealing its true essence. Then for the second go round, with the arrival of a new member in the reverie, make us firmly a part of the nightmare being dreamed by showing us the controls, while outside reality is shattered almost beyond recognition.

It is careful work. Is Martha's initial apprehension for example, a fear of what is being shared or of sharing herself? Did her sister's husband make a pass at her, or was he merely trying to wake her up? We can make our calls by the end, but we have only broken pieces of her by that time.

Broken pieces then that no longer fit together, mirrored in the many names for this woman, the many facets of the one image irretrievably lost, that this man hangs on his wall when no one else wouldn't. He sings well but it's a sinister, ruthless song.

Elizabeth Olsen's acting in Martha Marcy May Marlene is really fantastic (it may or may not be her first feature film, not sure which she did first this or Silent House). Her acting combined with the background we get make it easy to see how someone could be drawn into a cult - and stay for so long despite the abusiveness.

The interactions between Martha, her sister and her brother-in-law are downright strange at times but not in a 'hunh?' way at all. They're strange in a way that actually makes perfect sense for the characters and the experiences they've had.

I was really disappointed by the very, very, very end of the film - but I liked the other 100 or so minutes enough that I can forgive it (or forget about it). That and I really can't wait to see Elizabeth Olsen in something else.

Martha Marcy May Marlene continuously cuts back and forth between past and present. However, the audience could have used a lot more past and a bit more present to help understand more about Martha (Elizabeth Olsen). The past shows Martha's introduction to a reclusive cult deep in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. The present reveals it is two years later, Martha has decided to escape the cult, and shacks up with her sister and brother-in-law in an upscale Connecticut lakeside community.

First time feature writer/director Sean Durkin is a bit manipulative with his script and shot choices. Frequently, you have to wait a moment or two to figure out if this new scene is in the past or present; it shows early on he is going to play with your mind to make you guess what it is until a character walks on screen. This mirrors what is supposedly going on in Martha's head; she is having some major psychological trouble differentiating between her present surroundings and her experiences from the past two years.

It is up to the audience to interpret how Martha wound up in the company of the cult; the film does not show you that. Also, Martha must be extremely naïve, gullible, or downright accepting of cultish behavior because her assimilation is quite easy. Sharing beds, clothes, household chores, and each other's bodies comes quite naturally to her. Even after a drugging and rape, Martha just shrugs it off as her introduction to the 'family'. Through conversations with her sister in the present, you learn mom died young and dad is never mentioned but her early childhood experiences do not sound very much like they were setting young Martha up to be swallowed up by rapist farmers.

Back to the manipulation. Both segments, past and present, start very much in serene settings. The commune Martha joins is very accepting, calm, and the people provide a lot of compliments about her strong character and leadership skills. The present segment is on a beautiful lake in a gigantic house with supportive relatives. Then each respective scene adds an unsettling layer until by the end, these troubling and disturbing layers feel crushing. Events at the commune upset Martha to the point of breaking down and events in the present lake house are all of Martha's doing because she has brought some extreme paranoia and cascading delusions with her after her escape.

I do not recommend this film. The director made some creative editing choices and is very effective at building suspense, but that is all it is. The ability to muster unrelenting suspense and dread is not the only element to make an effective movie. I became very tired of watching Martha heap abuse and vitriol at her relatives who put up her ridiculous behavior much longer than most people would. I also grew impatient watching Martha get sucked into a cult through outrageously obvious maneuvers.

Why is the film world falling in love with Martha? Almost every critic lauds its suspense and acting, Durkin won Best Director at Sundance, and it was included in the Cannes Un Certain Regard section. For Elizabeth Olsen, it was a very impressive first role, but I disagree that she has done anything amazing here. She spends the majority of the movie just looking sheepish around John Hawkes and annoyed at her relatives.

Break out of the spell Martha Marcy May Marlene is trying to ensnare you in. Perhaps it is a cult itself and you do not realize how deep you are being manipulated by it until the preposterous and absurd ending.