Martha Marcy May Marlene

Right now you probably know Elizabeth Olsen as the younger sister of the tycoon Olsen twins. After you see Martha Marcy May Marlene, you’ll know her as an actress of uncommon subtlety and feeling.

She plays Martha, a young woman we meet on the day she decides to run away from a cult located in the Catskills. After two years in this life, Martha calls her older sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), who unblinkingly offers Martha the comfort of the Connecticut lake house she shares with her husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy). Adjustment doesn’t come easy for Martha, who thinks she can deprogram herself without telling anyone else about her ordeal.

John Hawkes is indelibly hypnotic at conveying the brilliance and brutality of Patrick, the cult leader who seduces Martha into a life subservient to only one ego: his. When the outside world intrudes, female cultists – whose sexual initiation with Patrick is labeled a ‘cleansing’ – use the name Marlene. But Patrick thinks Martha looks like a Marcy May (title mystery solved). Gradually the film emerges as a mesmerizing meditation on identity. Paulson shines as a woman who can’t figure out who her sister really is. We share her impatience, especially when Patrick stages a violent invasion. But it’s Olsen, as a damaged soul clinging to shifting ground, who makes this spellbinder impossible to shake.

    – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone