The most frightening screen villains often don’t raise their voice above a whisper, like the cult leader at the very dark heart of “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”
Oscar-nominee John Hawkes (“Winter’s Bone”) gives the film’s charismatic Patrick a rattling intensity, enhancing writer/director Sean Durkin’s assured screen debut.
—–
“Martha” will get plenty of award season love in the weeks to come, but we may look back at it as our first full-throttled glimpse of Elizabeth Olsen’s raw power. Yes, she’s an Olsen – the younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashley – but a few frames into “Martha” and you’ll instantly divorce her from any tabloid headlines.
Olsen stars as Martha, a young woman who escapes from a cult in the film’s opening moments. It’s not a mad dash for freedom, and it’s done practically under the nose of one of the cult leader’s disciples. That’s the first indication “Martha” isn’t like any film we’ve seen before.
Martha ends up in the comfortable home of her sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson), a happily married woman nursing a treasure trove of guilt. Martha and Lucy have few loved ones to rely on, so the sisterly bond is close – on the surface. But Lucy didn’t really know Martha before she ended up on her doorstep, and the young woman inhabiting her guest room now seems even more mysterious. Martha also rubs Lucy’s husband (Hugh Dancy) in every wrong way possible. He’s patient with her curious behavior, but he’s starting to resent her intrusion into their lives.
Martha lacks obvious social graces and seems haunted by something she refuses to discuss. Audiences absorb flashbacks of Martha’s life in the cult, sequences showing how Hawkes’ character rules with steely whispers and the occasional dash of brute force.
Durkin ladles out the flashback with frightening precision. Every reveal is slightly more menacing than the last, until we start to fear that Patrick’s cult may not be done with Martha just yet.
Olsen doesn’t step near a false note here, delivering a portrait of a woman so closed off we wait for any suggestion that her mental recovery is under way. It’s a guarded performance, one unwilling to let it all hang out for the purposes of an easy awards show clip reel.
Durkin needs little help ratcheting up the film’s mounting tension, but the numbing soundtrack ebbs and flows in just the right moments to make Martha’s recovery all the more dramatic. One sequence features a keening wail that all but suffocates the characters in fear.
The Oscar season’s heaviest hitters, like “J. Edgar,” “My Week with Marilyn” and “The Iron Lady,” have yet to hit theaters. But it’s hard to imagine any new film packing the same psychological wallop as “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”
The most inelegantly named film of the year may end up being its best.