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Published: 2 February, 2012
by DAN CARRIER

Directed by Sean Durkin
Certificate 15

Rating: 4 Out Of 5 Stars

While not a horror nor a thriller in the traditional sense, this superb film will give you the heebie-jeebies and has plenty of teeth-gnashing moments. It is deeply uncomfor­table viewing.

Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene is the story of one vulnerable person being taken into a rural cult, which at first seems to offer her a safe haven, a chance for reflection, and a canvas upon which she can work out her life-view and confidently reject well-founded ­societal values.

However, the enigmatic leader, Patrick (John Hawkes), is not as kind and benevolent as he first seems – and we see the fallout from her time with him and his gang of young, nubile followers.

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) has escaped from the farm managed by Patrick and has made contact with her estranged sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson).

The use of dual storytelling allows you to see the cause and effect of Martha’s experiences.

One the one hand, we have Martha in the here and now – she arrives at a beautiful lakeside retreat, which her sister and husband rent, seemingly a place of safety where the tentacles of the cult cannot touch her.

Yet she is haunted by her experience, and we see why in a series of flashbacks.

She ­compares her current ­status and her sister’s values with those of the cult she has just left.

Martha may have escaped, but she is ­damaged – and the after-effect of what she has seen, been subjected to, and involved in are too horrific to be simply left at the boundary of the farm she was living on.

Collective wool pulling, making questionable behaviour seem normal, is a classic trick of brainwashers, and there are plenty of scenes where this is carefully considered.

As well as spouting the usual nonsense about existing on other planets, elements of sexual abuse abound and it makes for a very uncomfortable couple of hours.

I found it even more disturbing by a memory it sparked for me: there was a vomit-inducing “educational” trust that once hoodwinked a load of usually rational friends of mine into ­paying a fortune to spend three intensive days at one of their self-help courses. It turned them into vacuous, mantra-spouting fake-smile zombies.

Watching Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene brought back the full horror of this cult-like programme, which I had done my best to forget about, and shows the powerful and careful direction of Sean Durkin and the cast he has assembled.