MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

For the first hour of this psychological drama, I was riveted. Riveted! And then the last 40 minutes happened.

I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting from writer-director Sean Durkin’s film but, when the closing credits suddenly started to roll, I felt like there was more movie left that I hadn’t seen.

The story follows its titular heroine, Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), in the weeks after she’s run away from a commune-cum-cult somewhere in upstate New York. Having been missing for a couple of years, she calls the only family she’s got – her older sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson) – for help. Soon, Martha and her deeply embedded PTSD are holed up in the lavish lakeside weekend home of Lucy and her husband, Max (Hugh Dancy). They have no idea where Martha’s been, and Martha tells them nothing... which makes her increasingly bizarre and outlandish behavior – such as curling up on the corner of Lucy and Max’s bed while they’re in it having sex (and unaware of her presence at first) – all the more troubling.

The present-day unraveling of Martha’s psyche is juxtaposed with flashbacks to her initially idyllic arrival at, and gradual indoctrination into, the cult. Its scrawny and dirty, but effectively charismatic, leader (John Hawkes, in a quietly menacing performance) preaches a quasi all-for-one, “what’s mine is yours” approach to living. But, as Martha soon discovers, women are second-class citizens in this world and everyone is expected to abide by a strict set of laws put forth by their increasingly creepy, and eventually dangerous, guru.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (the title of which refers to the three identities – Martha, Marcy May and Marlene – assumed by our heroine at various points) gets off to an absolutely breathless, amazing start. There is so much tension at the outset that I actually found myself literally breathless (not breathing!) at times, I was that invested in what was happening onscreen.

As the tension of Martha’s escape begins to meld with the inter-family tension of her sanctuary with Lucy and Max, though, it felt a bit like the wind was coming out of the film’s sails. It was sort of like watching a horror movie and waiting for the next big scare, only to discover that there aren’t any scares coming – after a while, the lack of a payoff gets annoying.

Olsen looks to be a worthy successor to Maggie Gyllenhaal, who likely would have been the star of this movie had it been made 10 years ago. They both possess that same doe-eyed vulnerability coupled with a self-assuredness that works in roles like this. Hawkes is great as the guy pulling all the strings, but both Paulson and Dancy seem out of place. Their uppity, big-city shtick gets old quick, and the longer they let Martha careen off the rails without actually doing anything about it – save for yelling at each other in frustration – the more unconvincing they become.

I think my biggest beef with MMMM is its ending. Or, more to the point, the absence of one. Now, I’m one of those people who loves it when a film ends unexpectedly and leaves the audience wondering about what happened and why, but this time? Not so much. It felt like the filmmakers ran out of ideas and didn’t know how to end the story, so they just cut to black right in the middle of a scene. For a second, I actually thought it was a projection glitch and that a reel of film must have been missing. I completely understand the intended effect, but it seemed like a copout.