MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE: it's what you don't see that's so scary

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is a viewing experience which rewards the patient.
I'm not referring to someone lying in a hospital bed but a film watcher who's willing to give this story some time to warm up. Because it is cold, lifeless and uninviting at the start, offering very little reason to stick with it.
But those willing to invest the time will be rewarded with a slow-burning, increasingly disturbing psychological thriller that will haunt the mind long after the final credits have crawled across the screen.

A very impressive Elizabeth Olsen (younger sister of the Olsen Twins) plays Martha, a young woman who turns to her sister and brother-in-law for shelter after running away from the rural upstate New York hippie commune where she's been living for the past two years.
Her reappearance is a surprise to her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson), as Martha's had no contact with her since moving to the commune, but it's not half as shocking as the disturbing behaviour Martha exhibits and her refusal to talk about her time in the commune.
Piece by tantalizing piece, writer-director Sean Durkin (in his feature film debut) reveals to the viewer the truth about what happened to Martha, while keeping Lucy in the dark, which only serves to ratchet up the tension as she struggles to help her sister with no understanding of what kind of support Martha needs.
The cross-cutting between life on the farm and the present day in Lucy's spacious lakeside house only serves to heighten the confusion as it's not always clear in which locale the events are taking place, or even whether they're real or just figments of Martha's tormented imagination.
What's so impressive is that Olsen and Durkin achieve so much with so little. The emphasis throughout is on understatement. The fear builds as much from the power of suggestion as from what's actually shown on screen. There's no jarring jump-cuts to the accompaniment of screeching violins, no hands looming out of the darkness to grab the unsuspecting heroine's shoulder, no screaming histrionics, and no blatant depictions of terror, horror or evil. It's the unseen and the half-seen which generates the anxiety.
In retrospect it's clear that the uninspiring opening is essential to creating the tone of the movie. It's the mundane way in which Martha's nightmare comes about that makes her story so genuinely chilling. So stick with it and you'll be glad (if slightly terrorised) that you did.