Martha or Marcy May?

<p> Everything looks happy and normal on the farm at the onset of <em>Martha Marcy May Marlene</em>; we might be watching an extended family and their friends as they fix the sheds and hoe the garden. Unusual details begin to emerge, however, as the men and women take separate dinner shifts around the long kitchen table and an awful lot of people are seen sleeping on the farmhouse floor. Soon enough the worst suspicions are confirmed. The “family” is really a cult of some sort and a young woman named Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) has every reason for concern as she slips silently out of the house before rushing across the road to disappear in the woods. The family will soon follow. </p> <p>Director Sean Durkin's debut is an unsettling psycho thriller, all the more disturbing for its quiet lack of Hollywood psychodrama or pyrotechnics. The story progresses like a darkening cloud in a gray sky, slowly building and ready to burst. Martha manages to be rescued by her long estranged big sister, but her behavior in “freedom” is oddly unsettling. Part of the story's strength is its sketchy, suggestive back-story. Martha is needy for fulfillment and love, yet the missing pieces in her biological family history are never assembled, and while the beliefs of the “family” she joins are never elucidated, the guitar-playing philosopher at the group's head has many affinities to Charles Manson, both in his chilling songwriting and affirmation of death and fear as attributes of “pure love.” </p> <p>A dark reflection of broken lives, <em>Martha Marcy May Marlene</em> is one of last year's best overlooked films. It's out on Blu-ray and DVD. </p>