Martha Marcy May Marlene (Wednesday, October 12, 2011) (90)

This is a pretty annoying story and a really bad script. Or, more than annoying, it's just a stupid, tired idea. Martha (Elizabeth Olsen, sister of the Olsen Twins) is a white girl who is escaping an upstate-New York cult when she's rescued by her tightly wound sister (played by Sarah Paulson). We see her life in the cult through her own flashbacks as she tries to re-integrate herself into normal non-cult society... albeit one that has country houses in Fairfield County, Connecticut. The cult leader, Patrick (John Hawkes), is a nice guy on the surface, but requires sexual submission by the women members of the group. He sings pretty too. Some nasty stuff happens, too, with murder and psycho-torture, but it's really never translated to us very clearly how disturbing it is or isn't. First-time director Sean Durkin would have done well to separate himself more from his script, which is clearly his passion piece. He's clearly a talented director and an average writer. Well, it's too soon to comment on his writing after on this work. There has been and will be lots of talk about Olsen's performance, but there is really not enough here for me to comment on. I think most people are taking the whole thing and the psychological effects of it and turning her into a superstar, but I need to see more. I feel most of what we see is the negative space of her acting - the spaces between spaces. There's lots of reaction here and I don't think her performance is really all that special. I'll hold judgement just for now.

Stars: 2 of 4