Martha Marcy May Marlene
A young, obviously troubled blond woman named Martha flees the odd Catskills farm community where she lives, dashes through the forest and outruns her pursuers. But some things you just can't run away from so easily. Martha eventually finds a pay phone and calls her older sister, Lucy, who hasn't seen Martha in two years and offers to pick her up.
Almost immediately upon arriving, Martha begins to display worrisome behavior - stripping naked in front of the couple to go for a swim, walking in on them while they're having sex and crawling into their bed as if they were watching TV, asking her sister grandly inappropriate questions and making flat-out rude observations about the couple's lifestyle.
One of the ingenious things about "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is how precisely the film is constructed, constantly drawing you in closer while making you dread what's coming. Bit by bit, and not always in chronological order, Durkin cuts away to the past to show us where Martha was and why she ran away.The more we learn about Martha's life on the farm - a strange, seemingly idyllic cult populated exclusively by young adults and children and ruled by Patrick, who is prone to Mansonesque observations such as "Death is pure love" - the more we understand her profound emotional and psychological damage. And as the full extent of Patrick's predatory evil is revealed, the more you fear Martha will never truly recover.
But neither Lucy nor Ted has any idea what Martha has been through, and she doesn't tell them - she may have escaped Patrick's clutches, but she's still brainwashed and under his spell, and she doesn't realize the turmoil she's creating for her sister.
