Martha Marcy May Marlene: Press reviews

'Mad, mixed-up, mind-boggling, magnificent.'

'Rough around the edges and too ambiguous for some tastes, this is grim but clever, insidiously creepy and affecting.'

'Elizabeth Olsen is not just good - but great '

At Cannes: 'The Olsen twins' sis scores with a star-making turn in this mesmerizing feature debut'

'a tense and superbly acted analysis of trauma and vulnerability'

'The greatest discovery here...is Olsen herself'

'a keenly assured debut as writer and director'

'It superficialises the movie's truer, deeper picture of violence: a violence of the mind, a control that masquerades as care, "love" deployed as a weapon of possession.'

'This is a disquieting and ambiguous movie in a classic US indie style.... acted and directed like a sensitive drama, rather than a scary movie, and is all the scarier for it.'

'they have set themselves a blazing standard, and deserve all the plaudits coming to them.'

'[an] impressive and haunting American debut film'

'a clichéd take on Brit obstinacy that threatened to cloud more pressing thematic concerns. Still, a very minor quibble for an otherwise majorly impressive and rigorous nightmare movie.'

At Cannes: 'An expertly crafted exercise in cinematic storytelling [...] fueled more by its ominous sense of dread than conventional dramatic elements.'

At Cannes: 'Durkin's effective yet frustratingly obtuse feature debut -- a sister project to his short "Mary Last Seen" -- invites contemplation while withholding the narrative drive needed to break out beyond, yes, cult status.'

'a bit too coy, too clever and too diffident to believe in'

'Martha Marcy May Marlene is unnerving not because of what it shows you, but because its lucidity and cleanness of execution – just the right side of antiseptic – create a marvellous sense of creeping unease.'

'unnecessarily obscure'