Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

How sad is this?

Admirable film.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This movie is simply a mildly altered version of the Manson story. Everything that happens in the cult is almost precisely what went on with Manson. And Olsen's "mesmerizing" performance? Well she simply pouts the entire movie. So if that's your idea of brilliant acting...Worst, there is no ending. It's almost as if they ran out of budget at 4:15 PM, or their camera's hard drive filled up so they stopped.So all in all it's totally unoriginal, incomplete & ultimately uninteresting. Skip it & read Bugliosi's book instead. Or, if you want to see a truly gripping movie about being sucked in & then pulled out of a cult, watch "Ticket to Heaven".

Elizabeth Olsen was unbelievably good in this film. We get to see more about the cause behind Martha May's unstable state of mind in as the story progresses. The psychological destruction wrought by the cult has made her paranoid and she has never been the same after escaping from an abusive cult. Throughout the picture, we get flashbacks showing glimpses of Marcy May's introduction into the cult's world, as a new recruit, she was prepped for the horrific initiation ritual that each of them experience. Lot of these scenes were unsettling, it was like watching Dogtooth. John Hawkes pulled it off as a creepy cult leader. He controls and manipulates young women, telling them just enough to allow them to rationalize what's happening. The cult leader brainwashed his "girls" to see the world in black and white where he encouraged them to commit terrible crimes.It's no wonder Martha has put up walls around her (metaphorically speaking) because she feels threatened all the time and lacks social etiquette as a result of being harassed by the cult. When she escapes to her sister's place. She had a hard time recovering and has a completely warped overview of the outside world that even they couldn't completely help her. We get flashbacks showing glimpses of Marcy May's introduction into the cult's world and her leery character is flawlessly captured on screen by Lizzie Olsen. It's about how Martha's pretense of normality begins to fade as time passes and her sister wasn't being very helpful in bossing around her telling her to get a job and pushing her over the edge. She has been through a lot and her sister has no clue that she was an emotionally broken woman who needs all the help she can get to forget her past but instead ends up making it worse for her. And it is not too long before she becomes hopelessly paranoid to a point where she attacked a person at a party she thought was back to haunt her. Lizzie has brilliantly depicted the confused and emotionally-scarred Martha May and she deserve more credit for her role because it appears like she put in a lot of effort to bring this character to life. Lizzie is definitely the best actresses around and I hope she plays in more thriller dramas like this. Elizabeth is one of the very few remarkable actresses in mainstream cinema who would make our heads turn. This film would be nothing short of a masterpiece if they had given it a proper ending for Martha rather than a "the past is back to bite you in the ass" cliffhanger ending. Other than that, its a good slow paced thriller.

Basically I only watched this film because of Elizabeth Olsen who is the youngest sister of well known twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. I honestly wouldn't know the rest of the cast in this but she was the only one I knew in this, she did a good job however this really is one of her movies that is the worst I've seen. Why you ask?The movie dragged on and I just couldn't understand why her character left her family. Was it because of her boyfriend or was it because of their beliefs? That was what I couldn't understand of. I mean, it should give us a better clue then have us viewers confused and wondering the whole time of the reason? This movie is pretty much a waste of time really!

Loved the movie, hated the ending. Martha Marcy May Marlene, even the title was enough to draw my interest. At first I thought - is this going to be about several women on the compound? But Director and writer Sean Durkin, has put a lot of thought into both the story and the direction of the film capturing the strangeness of a cult environment and the brainwashing that takes place while a person is subjected to the environment. Like the title, it's complicated the interwoven script moves through the movie as well as the cinematography and transitions it helps the audience understand Martha, played by Elizabeth Olsen. It's involved, I found myself really worried about Martha as a character, worried she would be abducted, possibly hurt her sister or hurt herself. This move does fall down flat on it's face at the conclusion however, not because it is indefinite but because after viewing all the violence and control exhibited by the leaders of the cult we are left with only one conclusion Patrick, the cult leader, will kill Martha. Why create an indefinite ending when the majority of the evidence suggests otherwise. Or as a director and writer,much more evidence would need to be offered that Martha is just paranoid. Loved the movie, hated the ending, great acting, writing, directing. Four out of five popcorn balls!