Martha Marcy May Marlene

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Martha Marcy May Marlene

R

2011

1h 41m

Drama

Mystery & Thriller

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

90%

Tomatometer

210 Reviews

71%

Popcornmeter

10,000+ Ratings

After several years of living with a cult, Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) finally escapes and calls her estranged sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), for help. Martha finds herself at the quiet Connecticut home Lucy shares with her new husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy), 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 (John Hawkes).

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Critics Consensus

Led by a mesmerizing debut performance from Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene is a distinctive, haunting psychological drama.

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Christy Lemire

Associated Press

03/18/2014

In quiet, intimate ways, it is one of the most startling, haunting films you'll see all year.

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Peter Rainer

Christian Science Monitor

03/18/2014

B

Durkin intersperses the present-day scenes with increasingly revelatory flashbacks from Martha's two years in the cult.

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Violet Lucca

Film Comment Magazine

06/28/2013

With a diegesis mapped along the mental contours of its protagonist, Martha Marcy May Marlene harkens back to Pasolini's notion of the cinema of poetry--and achieves it beautifully.

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Yasser Medina

Cinefilia

06/10/2024

6/10

A psychological drama that builds its labyrinth with a fairly organic performance by Elizabeth Olsen, but its narrative often remains in an overly calculated zone that, in its register of circularity, never takes risks. [Full review in Spanish]

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Joe Lipsett

Anatomy of a Scream Podcast Network

01/11/2024

4.5/5

Elizabeth Olsen stuns in her feature debut in a film that perfectly embodies PTSD. While the murder sequence doesn't fully work, the way Durkin shifts between timelines and the "before they were famous" cast makes this a must-see

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Mike Massie

Gone With The Twins

11/30/2020

6/10

The acting is exceptional all around, as is the minimalist score.

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Steven t

@SST609 Jan 8

Love,love,love this movie. Acting is perfect!

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emily K

@QueenOnion Jan 3

This is a decent take on processing trauma but even with such a great cast, it felt jumbled and disorganized. This may have been intentional so as to seem disorienting, like what the protagonist is going through, but it just didn't work for me.

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Keith B B

@Okbullard Dec 22

This had great potential but the last 40 minutes was horrible like the writers gave up. Also I hate films with non-endings. 90%.... Really???

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Alain E

@AlainE Aug 20

I have to assume that most of the reviewers are equally insane as the protagonist. This is supposedly a serious, deep movie that shows us that a girl of about twenty who spent two years in a cultish community, is not aware anymore, after she escapes , that you don’t swim naked in a public body of water, neither you enter your sister’s bedroom and lie next to them while she is having sex with her husband. Elizabeth Olsen is beautiful and plays her miserable role well, but the whole enterprise is misguided and a waste of everyone’s time.

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Will D

@Spike93 Aug 3

Deprogramming ain't no easy thing. Neither is making a satisfying ending, I guess.

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Lynn A

Aug 3

I was upset by the cat being killed. Also by the man who was killed after promising he wouldn’t call the police. Olsen is a good actor. The ending was awful for me. They were being followed on their way to a psychiatric institute; then the movie ended. From my perspective, I feel my emotions were toyed with; I was lured into caring, twisted into anxiety, with no resolution. It’s as though the movie ended at its climax, its peak of tension, with my hoping she, Marcy May, could get help. Too many plot strings unraveled, leaving me hanging. Gratuitous violence and sex aren’t appealing to me. If there had been some kind of ending, then I could have been far more satisfied. As it was, watching this movie wasn’t worth the emotional effort I expended, hoping she could survive, and perhaps one day, thrive. Also, her sister could have realized very soon after picking her up, Martha needed counseling, “debriefing.” But I thought Martha’s sister did try very hard to help her.

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Sean Durkin

Director

Elizabeth Olsen

Martha

Sarah Paulson

Lucy

John Hawkes

Patrick

Hugh Dancy

Ted

Brady Corbet

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Synopsis

After several years of living with a cult, Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) finally escapes and calls her estranged sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), for help. Martha finds herself at the quiet Connecticut home Lucy shares with her new husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy), 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 (John Hawkes).

Director: Sean Durkin
Producer: Josh Mond, Antonio Campos, Chris Maybach, Patrick Cunningham
Screenwriter: Sean Durkin
Distributor: Fox Searchlight
Production Co: Fox Searchlight
Rating: R (Disturbing Violent Content|Disturbing Sexual Content|Language|Nudity)
Genre: Drama, Mystery & Thriller
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Oct 21, 2011, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Aug 1, 2013
Box Office (Gross USA): $3.0M
Runtime: 1h 41m

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