Intense Insane Damaged Deranged–Martha Marcy May Marlene proves to be all of these things and much more in this psychologically tense and emotionally disturbed trek through the mind of a young woman who finds herself caught between the realms of memory and reality.

This movie is a quiet thriller. It is about Martha (Elizabeth Olson), also known as Marcy May, and her attempt to reintegrate herself into a life of normalcy after having spent two years off the grid at a commune in upstate New York. The commune, run by Patrick (John Hawkes), is based on a hierarchy of physical abuse, mental head games, and “free love”.

The movie jumps back and forth between Martha’s time on the cult farm with Patrick, and the time spent with her sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her husband at their lush,Connecticut lake house after having fled the commune.

Perhaps the most thrilling aspect of this movie concerns Martha’s slow descent into madness and her inability to reconnect with the real world, evidenced by the unique manner in which the story is told. At first, we are only given subtle glimpses into Martha’s life on the commune. We see that Patrick is a charming and charismatic freethinker and promoter of a simpler existence. We see that the commune is made up of hard work and guitar jam sessions and skinny dipping in the waterfalls of the Catskills.  However, as Martha spends more time at her sister’s, we see that she becomes more and more withdrawn and disillusioned with her present circumstances. Through deeper and deeper flashbacks, we discover the cult element of the commune—the violence and abuse and intimidation. Patrick and his followers seek out and brainwash young girls to fill domestic roles and share their bodies amongst the men.

The darkness and depravity of the commune in this film really creeps on you, slowly seeping its way into your subconscious with each minute that passes. As Martha begins to act stranger and stranger and lose her grip on the current reality, we are given the correlating and haunting catalyst from the past that explains her troubled mind. Really–her flashbacks in this movie are so artfully interspersed with her struggle to hold off insanity, that even I began to feel a certain sense of hopelessness for Martha, her sister, and any of their chances at a normal life.

The fear that this movie generates does not originate from monsters, aliens, or serial killers. No, this movie is scary because it portrays a darker side of humanity, one that is disguised by smiling faces and charming physiques, one that infects the mind and takes hold of the senses, one that you cannot escape in sleep or awake or hundreds of miles away on the picturesque lake shores of the Connecticut countryside.