Martha Marcy May Marlene
Martha Marcy May Marlene
R | 21 October 2011 (USA)
Martha Marcy May Marlene Trailers

After several years of living with a cult, Martha finally escapes and calls her estranged sister, Lucy, for help. Martha finds herself at the quiet Connecticut home Lucy shares with her new husband, Ted, but the memories of what she experienced in the cult make peace hard to find. As flashbacks continue to torment her, Martha fails to shake a terrible sense of dread, especially in regard to the cult's manipulative leader.

Reviews
Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.
SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Anthony El-megerhi I expected the movie to be great since one of the producers is Antonio Campos he's known for his unique confusing films he make ,not to forget to mention the master of this movie Sean Durkin , what an outstanding ,catching story ! this man must win an Oscar just saying . this movie as my title says keep you wondering about the missing pieces of the story it doesn't make the film boring at all it makes it mystery there's philosophical arguments that will make you think , i like the eccentric character rolled by Elizabeth Olsen it has a lot of drama and weird actions i don't think any other actor can do the same job she did she really fir the role . if you're into mystery/drama types of movies go watch this now .
farts_vandelay I just finished watching this movie and felt compelled to write down my thoughts.Its been a while since I've watched a movie that made me feel this way. I'm not angry but I feel something close to it. This movie is a flaming pile of fecal matter. The only good thing about it is that you get to see Elizabeth Olsen naked and you know there's a problem if nudity is the only thing going for a movie.I watched this because I like Olsen and her other movie Silent House. Here, the acting and production quality are fine, but the story has absolutely nothing going for it. Having likable characters isn't a necessity, but there has to be at least one or more characters that have something about them that makes you want to keep watching. It isn't just the main character with this movie; none of these characters are likable or compelling in any way. At first, I felt sympathy for Martha but not for long.I get it, certain people can get brainwashed by these cult-like groups and it's an unfortunate situation but Olsen and her gang weren't just weak and ignorant; they were also pretentious, self-entitled, and so unlikable that I kept thinking, why am I watching this? They went well beyond the definition of sheeple. And the ending was the toilet clogging after pinching out this giant loaf. If it wasn't for Olsen, I would have turned this off well before the ending but I was definitely getting there.
Popcorn Addict This is a tough film to watch because it is so incredibly static, and leaves the viewer with many unanswered questions. Although Elizabeth Olsen made a great performance I wish that they used more character development for her. That was the point though...to leave her character blurry, indecipherable, and undefined like the very barcode in the film poster. I feel like there was also a parallel between Martha's carnal, unconstrained nudity and her "stripped" soul. She is reduced to nothing but a body, a shell. I thought that it was strange to see a film involving a cult that had nothing to do with religion. Even though this was an extremely slow film in which not much truly happens, it seems like so much more when you analyze things in hindsight.
hxamaranth Yes, it could have been the cult coming after her and yes they might have forced or coerced her to return or killed them all but it could also have been no more than some stranger that they almost hit and the rest could be Martha's intensifying paranoia constructing what we were seeing.The goal though was to get the audience to ask these questions but I think Durkin failed in defining the intent of posing this question which was to illustrate Martha's own confusion and uncertainty about her paranoia, not the audience's confusion about what happened. I could possibly suggest that he use a tighter close up on Olsen to capture the nuances of her expressions showing her fear and uncertainty but I think he tried to use a different tactic...Note that at times of her most paranoid, she is visually alone in the scenes. In the back of the car we don't see Ted and Lucy in the front seat. At the dinner party she is alone with the bartender despite the fact that there were dozens of people nearby. During her final swim she is alone when she sees the man sitting across the lake watching her. Even when she awakes in a panic and pushes Ted down the stairs we don't see his face or Lucy until after the fact. When she breaks the window on the black SUV, when she hears the pine cones hitting her window at night... she is alone.I think we as an audience just weren't offered a way to tie our own questions with Martha's state of mind. Maybe if there was a scene in which Martha asks these same questions to Lucy. Maybe if they shot from a first-person perspective. I don't know but it just didn't quite work for me.