Haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia, a damaged woman struggles to re-assimilate with her family after fleeing an abusive cult.
A stunningly assured, elegantly crafted and profoundly disturbing portrait of a traumatised mind, MMMM rockets Durkin and Olsen to the top of the ‘ones to watch’ pile.
First woozily unsettling and then coolly shocking. Olsen and Hawkes are remarkable.
Rough around the edges and too ambiguous for some tastes, this is grim but clever, insidiously creepy and affecting. And in Olsen and Durkin, it marks the arrival of two exciting talents to watch. It still should be called Mental Sex Cult.
An ambiguous, beautiful film blurring the lines between reality, paranoia and fantasy.
The picture is suspenseful, memorable, thought-provoking and psychologically credible, brilliantly acted all round. A creepily ambiguous ending stays with you.
Big on atmosphere and full of subtle, carefully crafted performances, it is, in the end, a horror film of rare intelligence and insight.
Durkin is to be applauded for avoiding pat resolutions and easy outs – and for showcasing the remarkable Olsen to such advantage – but his film could have used a little more narrative meat on its bones.
It's acted and directed like a sensitive drama, rather than a scary movie, and is all the scarier for it.
It is remarkable for two debuts, Sean Durkin writing and directing his first feature, and Elizabeth Olsen starring in hers. In their different ways they have set themselves a blazing standard, and deserve all the plaudits coming to them.
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.
A slippery thriller.
Like the ordeals of the central character, the film flickers powerfully in the memory.
Writer/director Sean Durkin creates a persuasive sense of unease, in which he is greatly aided by Olson's distracted, otherworldly presence. Hawkes follows his memorable, coke-addicted anti-hero Teardrop in Winter's Bone with a performance that is finely balanced between charisma and creepiness.
Martha Marcy May Marlene is unnerving not because of what it shows you, but because its lucidity and cleanness of execution – just the right side of antiseptic – create a marvellous sense of creeping unease, especially when it comes to the abrupt, audaciously uncertain ending.
What many of the film's admirers at Sundance and elsewhere have greeted as suggestively enigmatic insights in the girl's mind, strike me as unnecessarily obscure, even perfunctory. Olsen, however, does have a disquieting presence.
Maybe this film is really commenting on our hectic, atomised lifestyles – that if you step away from them and live in the rugged outback, detached from it all – it becomes almost impossible to fit back into consumer society.
Sean Durkin
General release. Check local listings for show times.
Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Friday March 16, 2012, until Thursday March 22, 2012. Check with cinema for film times.. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com
Eden Court Theatre, Inverness from Friday March 16, 2012, until Thursday March 22, 2012. Check with cinema for film times.. More info: www.eden-court.co.uk