Review of Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) by Marcdoyle — 21 Oct 2011

I'm giving this film a slightly higher score than I think it deserves simply for the intense, disturbing feeling it left me with. The film's structure - which tells a tale in sort of a double-helix structure, alternating between a girl's time in a Utopian cult and her time with her sister and the sister's new husband after fleeing from the cult - is effectively spun.

It doesn't knock you over the head with it's bluntness. It becomes more and more stressful as you see more of both stories. John Hawkes and Sarah Paulson are uniformly terrific as the dominant supporting characters on opposite sides of the film's divide.

And Elizabeth Olsen is clearly a rising star, though I don't think she's as effective in this role as someone like Jennifer Lawrence is in Winter's Bone - a film that I think will be compared to this one by many.

The ending of the film will certainly have you talking with whomever you go to the movie with - so go with somebody "with it." Now that I've dwelt on it a bit more, a think a 9 is appropriate.

See it.