Mary-Kate and Ashley who? In T. Sean Durkin’s brilliant, haunting debut, Elizabeth Olsen shows that, while her vapid sisters may be the family’s millionaires, she’s the really talented one.
Playing Martha, a young woman reunited with her sister after two years in a cult, Olsen is stunning. As the camera caresses her face with love, her dreamy, disassociated stare betrays a woman lost to her memories of another life. The atmosphere, too, is dream-like but with the breath-stealing foreboding of a reverie that’s slowly but surely drifting across the Styx into the realm of nightmares.
This unnerving shift from dreams, reality and memory is what Martha finds herself struggling with. As she climbs into bed beside her sister and brother-in-law while they’re having sex, it’s clear her cult experience has left her eerily disconnected from not only what is normal, but reality itself. As flashbacks and dreams constantly interrupt her thoughts, she becomes increasingly paranoid and unsure of the world around her. Durkin brilliantly weaves flashbacks of the cult throughout the narrative, always linking the harrowing memories back to Martha’s current state so that the film flows like an effortless stream of consciousness.
The picture’s haunting quality is largely evoked by the subtle but striking visuals. Durkin’s slow, lingering shots and the slightly grainy, muted palette combine to give Martha Marcy May Marlene the luminous poise of Sofia Coppola, but with a B-movie horror aesthetic. Much like the cult that seduced Martha, it’s simple, organic, and yet terrifyingly sinister.
And you don’t get much more terrifying than John Hawkes. The Oscar-nominated star of Winter’s Bone has mastered menace so brilliantly that he claims he’s been asked to play Charles Manson countless times. And as cult leader Patrick, he comes damn close. Playing on Martha’s vulnerabilities and fear of being abandoned, his cruel manipulation is never less than bone-shudderingly chilling.
A haunting, meticulously crafted psychological drama, Martha Marcy May Marlene will fill the pit of your stomach with fear and dread.