Reviews
The Times
Wendy Ide
"One of the most chillingly intelligent and thoughtfully acted films of the year. "
03/02/2012
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Total Film
Emma Dibdin
"A stunningly assured, elegantly crafted and profoundly disturbing portrait of a traumatised mind."
23/01/2012
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The Los Angeles Times
Betsy Sharkey
"The filmmaker sometimes stumbles as Martha tries to navigate normal — the cult side of her story is the more seductive. Yet like life itself, "Martha Marcy May Marlene" is a film of rough edges and no easy answers, nearly perfect in its imperfection."
21/10/2011
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
"Big on atmosphere and full of subtle, carefully crafted performances, it is, in the end, a horror film of rare intelligence and insight."
02/02/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Tim Robey
"Tipping into overt horror is a mistake made just the once, in a stabby sequence of home invasion. What’s far creepier is not knowing how soon, or how, Martha’s recent experience is going to catch up with her. "
03/02/2012
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Empire Magazine
Ian Freer
"This is Elizabeth Olsen’s movie. Martha has a huge emotional range to work through and Olsen nails them all ... She provides a compelling centre to a psychological puzzle that, especially in its coda, offers no easy answers, just a complex study of a tortured soul."
30/01/2012
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The Evening Standard
David Sexton
"We all try to fit in to families, to groups, to institutions and we're all distorted by that, all lost as well as found by that process. The film reminds us of that element in our own lives in the most unsettling way."
03/02/2012
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
"A psychological thriller premised on the self-contagion, and schizoid to-ings and fro-ings, of a mind suffering spiritual culture shock."
02/02/2012
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
"A disquieting and ambiguous movie in a classic US indie style. It may not be entirely perfect – I sat down to it twice before fully hearing its insistent, sinister whisper – but there's an unsettling darkness in the deep green, sun-dappled shade of its woodland locations."
02/02/2012
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
"A compelling wave of dread gathers during [this] tense psychodrama ... though for most of its length we can't be sure from which direction it's coming. By the time it breaks over us the film has ended, and we leave it feeling pretty freaked out."
03/02/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Jonathan Romney
"Has its moments of trauma and violence, all delicately handled – this is a horror story of sorts, but almost entirely in eerie pianissimo. It's the gentle tweaks that stick with you.
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01/01/1900
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The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
"Durkin ... specializes not in apocalyptic grandeur but in the creak and the tinkle of the uncanny.
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24/10/2011
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Time Out
Dave Calhoun
"It sounds eventful, but there’s a lazy, dreamy quality to Martha Marcy May Marlene, a reflection of Martha’s passive, troubled state bolstered by the film’s calm, pastoral and grainy look. "
30/01/2012
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The Sunday Times
Cosmo Landesman
"This is one of those small gems that take you by surprise.
"
05/02/2012
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Time Magazine
Mary Pols
"It’s such a hazy, sensory-rich jigsaw of reminder and recollection that I don’t feel done with Martha Marcy May Marlene."
21/10/2011
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The New York Times
A. O Scott
"The drama is all in the jumps and juxtapositions, rather than in any sustained consideration of Martha’s experience. She remains a blank space in the middle of a film that is an impressive piece of work without achieving quite the emotional impact it intends. We are witnessing not the disintegration of a personality, but rather the careful construction of a series of effects ... a bit too coy, too clever and too diffident to believe in."
20/10/2011
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The Observer
Philip French
"What many of the film's admirers at Sundance and elsewhere have greeted as suggestively enigmatic insights in the girl's mind, strike me as unnecessarily obscure, even perfunctory.
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05/02/2012
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The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
"Unfortunately, writer-director Sean Durkin conducts proceedings at the speed of a snail that’s lost the will to live ... And the heroine’s passivity and absence of personality, which presumably left her susceptible to the cult in the first place, makes her extremely irksome."
03/02/2012
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