Martha Marcy May Marlene

Mesmerizing, haunting and tense. Martha Marcy May Marlene is a fantastic debut for director Sean Durkin and star Elizabeth Olsen.

Olsen is incredibly watchable with her unique features and ability to quickly yet subtlety float between naivety, anger, paranoia and girlishness. You never feel like she is acting. It doesn’t feel like some actress pouting in front of the camera whilst the director pans slowly over a wide shot. Olsen’s Marcy May is a person who is smart enough to escape a cult but still shell-shocked by all the things she has seen. Imagine harboring the verbal and mental scars of two years of horror while trying to act normal at a swanky dinner party. She needs her family but they don’t understand her because she doesn’t know how to communicate years of insanity and brain washing.

The film draws you in by being compulsively watchable. Your eyes are drawn to the screen due to Olsen’s natural performance and John Hawkes increasingly threatening character. He is an ultra skinny alpha male who has a way with words to mask the venom and insanity flowing through his blood stream. He is the type of man who will do something terrible to you then convince you that it was good for you.  Everytime he is on-screen you realize this man could take confused homeless youth and turn them into his followers. Hawkes manages to be insane without acting crazy. The fact that this willowy man becomes a threatening force is a credit to the writing and acting.

The film feels natural without being pretentious. It creates dread without scaring you. It shocks you without being graphic. Watch this movie in a dark room with the phone off. You will be doing yourself a big disservice if you don’t give it all your attention.

The only complaint I have is the eating and drinking sound effects. The beer drinking is accompanied with loud fake slurps and the eating is very squishy. When you are immersed in a world there is nothing worse than slurps and squishes.

Watch Martha Marcy May Marlene. Butcher the title multiple times. Love the fact that there are engrossing movies like this.