Martha Marcy May Marlene (15)

Alison Rowat's Review

There’s a wooziness from the off about this tale of a young woman entering a cult. Don’t let your guard drop though, because this is a smart chiller of the first order.

Martha (Elizabeth Olson) is a troubled soul who thinks she has found her place in the collection of simple farming types led by ageing dropout Patrick (John Hawkes, outstanding as Teardrop in Winter’s Bone, ditto here). This feels like home, like the kind of family she needs, but all is not, as you’d expect, as it seems.

Sean Durkin avoids predictability to deliver a tale that keeps you guessing, about Martha and everything else. At times a family drama, at other times a don’t-look-now chiller, Durkin’s drama is cold-hand-on-the-back-of-the-neck entertainment.

Olsen is outstanding, with sterling support from Sarah Paulson as the big sister who tries to help her sibling find some answers.

Paul Greenwood's Review

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) lives on a farm commune with a large group of young men and women, though not entirely of her own free will, until she runs away and goes to live with her sister and her husband.

What follows works so well because it only shows what took place on the farm in fragments of flashback, in parallel with Martha trying to readjust to life, though she seems to have lost any sense of normality.

As the details are teased out, what at first seemed like a safe and happy place was in fact anything but, in a dark and brooding drama that’s lifted a level by a pair of exceptional performances. John Hawkes, so memorable in Winter’s Bone, is magnetic and chilling as the manipulative leader of the commune, while the fragile yet fearless Olsen marks herself out as a talent to be watched.