Martha Marcy May Marlene

Name: Martha Marcy May Marlene
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Released: October 21, 2011
Duration: 120 min
Rating: 75

2011

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Generally favorable reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 137 Ratings

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7.0	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 137 Ratings

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Martha Marcy May Marlene

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Movie Details & Credits

Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: October 21, 2011 | R

Summary: Martha Marcy May Marlene is a powerful psychological thriller starring Elizabeth Olsen as Martha, a young woman rapidly unraveling amidst her attempt to reclaim a normal life after fleeing from a cult and its charismatic leader. Seeking help from her estranged older sister Lucy and brother-in-law, Martha is unable and unwilling to revealMartha Marcy May Marlene is a powerful psychological thriller starring Elizabeth Olsen as Martha, a young woman rapidly unraveling amidst her attempt to reclaim a normal life after fleeing from a cult and its charismatic leader. Seeking help from her estranged older sister Lucy and brother-in-law, Martha is unable and unwilling to reveal the truth about her disappearance. When her memories trigger a chilling paranoia that her former cult could still be pursuing her, the line between Martha's reality and delusion begins to blur. (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

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Director: T. Sean Durkin

Genre(s): Drama, Thriller

Rating: R

Runtime: 120 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Steven Rea

Oct 27, 2011

Moves from its protagonist's dream state to her memories to her waking present in imperceptible shifts - the effect is disorienting, at first, but ingenious. Read full review

Bill Goodykoontz

Nov 3, 2011

Olsen makes us understand, as best we can, Martha's plight. She has a tenuous grip on reality, and, thanks to Olsen's performance and Durkin's sure hand, by the film's end, so do we. Read full review

Michael Phillips

Oct 27, 2011

The acting in Durkin's feature is excellent. Olsen is utilized largely as an object for camera adoration, but not in the usual glamorizing way. Olsen, Hawkes and company play slippery figures with lovely assurance. Read full review

David Rooney

Oct 16, 2011

Elizabeth Olsen steps onto the radar as a seriously accomplished actor in this mesmerizing drama, which also marks an assured feature debut for writer-director Sean Durkin. Read full review

Andrew O'Hehir

Oct 21, 2011

Durkin seems to be aiming for a Hitchcock-style thriller that has the unsettling psychological and narrative ambiguity of, say, Michael Haneke's films, with an ending you can read in many different ways. If he doesn't quite get there, it's still a remarkable feature-directing debut. Read full review

Liam Lacey

Oct 28, 2011

Director Sean Durkin's precisely constructed psychological thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene is a movie of many m-words – memories, mirrors and madness. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

Oct 27, 2011

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a strange case, a drama that's disturbing and yet inert. Writer-director Sean Durkin builds an atmosphere of dread, which means that he persuades us to believe in the characters and in the central situation. But he doesn't build interest. Read full review

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User Reviews

DrBlahBlah

May 2, 2017

A brilliant psychological thriller about trauma, MMMM explores the mentality of a cult and its followers with admirable restraint and nuance. Very undervalued.

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Belmsher

Jan 20, 2012

Althought not as good as Black Swan, MMMM is certainly the best psychological thriller of 2011. Olsen is an absolute surprise. Had to see this twice. It's very slow-paced but, if you commit , very fragile, intense and disturbing as well. What I appreciated the most was that lots of issuesAlthought not as good as Black Swan, MMMM is certainly the best psychological thriller of 2011. Olsen is an absolute surprise. Had to see this twice. It's very slow-paced but, if you commit , very fragile, intense and disturbing as well. What I appreciated the most was that lots of issues were not explicitly settled but you can decode them, you can see where they are. Those subtleties made the movie. Just wondered why the trailer has some scenes which don't appear in the official version.… Expand