Thursday, 10 January 2013

Sharing is not all it's cracked up to be


Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Directed by Sean Durkin this film stars Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy. A young woman struggles to overcome her time living with a cult while she stays with her sister.

This is a real slow burner of a film which has a great ambiguous ending but these strengths are also the weaknesses of the film. The plot is a bit on the thin side, not showing us how the protagonist joined the cult is an error in my opinion, but it does provide an interesting character study. Elizabeth Olsen gives a good haunted performance in the lead but I was always left wanting more detail from the story which relies a little too much on not telling.

4/5

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