When you’ve got this many names, if you don’t have an identity crisis, something else is wrong. And there’s plenty wrong with Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), through whom we experience Martha Marcy May Marlene, a disturbing and absorbing, if not altogether satisfying, psychological thriller. 

At least, when the film opens, Martha is trying to do something about her situation. She’s running away from an insidious commune where she’s spent the last two years being brainwashed and groomed for the service of the cult’s charismatic leader, Patrick, (John Hawkes).  After making it through the woods, to the relative safety of a roadside restaurant, she makes the difficult call to her estranged older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson).  Lucy is now living with her wealthy, new husband Ted (Hugh Dancy) with whom she is trying to have a baby.  There’s plenty of room in their luxurious lakeside holiday home in Connecticut, but Martha finds it impossible to escape her demons and adapt to normality.

Writer/Director Sean Durkin mercifully structures the story in flashback mode so that the gruelling portrait of life in the cult is distanced by the knowledge that Martha is safe – at least physically.  The flashbacks are not, however, solely an expositional tool: they are the nightmarish memories that haunt Martha’s life.  Martha might have escaped physically, but can she ever escape the mental scars left by her time in the cult?

From the song that Patrick sings to Martha (who is given new names in the cult) to the sexual initiation of young female members, to the cult’s burglaries of middle class families, there is no doubt Patrick is modelled after Charles Manson, who was also a singer/songwriter of sorts.  Perhaps the most chilling scene in the film is a routine burglary that turns into a gruesome murder when the owner of the house is awakened and confronts the burglars. At one point Martha is told that Patrick only has ‘boy’ babies, and it is thankfully left to our imaginations to determine whether this is just a matter of statistical chance.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a riveting film, and Olsen is convincing as its vulnerable victim.  But Durkin has a problem in that his protagonist is so troubled and self-absorbed that she is not a very likeable character.  We can’t relate to her; only sympathise with a wasted life. We don’t learn anything about why Martha allowed herself to stay in the cult, but we can imagine various scenarios. Lucy and, to a lesser extent, Ted, are extremely patient, and perhaps unbelievably tolerant, particularly when Martha refuses to tell them anything about the last two years of her life. When they finally insist that she seek professional help, we are more than relieved.  

Still Durkin does an excellent job sustaining the suspense. We are continually worrying that Patrick will discover Martha’s hideaway and take her back, putting her family at risk.  Martha’s nightmares and paranoid visions become ours.