Martha Marcy May Marlene - 1 1/2 stars

This movie would have made a great short film. But as a feature, it was too boring and it left me with too many questions.

At the start of the movie, we meet Marcy May (Elizabeth Olsen). She is living in some kind of commune in an isolated farm house. She sneaks away in the early morning hours and goes to a fast food restaurant. Is this a cult? Is she escaping? If so, why is she allowed to get away so easily?

She calls her sister, who has not heard from her in 2 years. She tells her sister that she was with a boyfriend and just lost track of time. She also says she got rid of her cell phone and never bothered to get a new one.

We find out that her real name is Martha. She lives with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law Ted (Hugh Dancy) and tries to adjust to normal life. Through flashbacks we learn about what life was like in the commune, which was actually a cult. She has a hard time breaking some of the habits she developed with the cult. She doesn't realize that it isn't ok to go skinnydipping at the lake behind their house. She doesn't understand that she can't just walk into Lucy's bedroom and lay on the bed while Lucy and Ted have sex.

For every single thing we learn about Martha's life inside the cult, there are 5 things we don't learn. I'm fine with a movie leaving some things to our imagination and not spelling everything out, but this was just too much. We see the scene where she first meets the cult's leader, Patrick (John Hawkes), but we don't see the events leading up to it. Why was she interested in joining the cult in the first place? Did she know it was a cult? If not, what did she think went on there?

We get fragments of ideas about what they believe, but not enough. We learn that they engage in some criminal activity, but the movie doesn't show us the point in that. Do they hate wealthy home owners, or are they just trying to steal stuff?

The scenes with Martha living with Lucy and Ted are very effective. Martha admits that her mind is so messed up that she doesn't know what actually happened and what was a dream. There are a couple of scenes where she expresses her philosophy and argues with Ted and Lucy, but we don't get enough information to understand where that comes from.

I had a hard time believing that Ted and Lucy would put up with her for so long. They accept her story that she was living with a boyfriend, and they never demand more information. By the time she starts exhibiting such strange behaviour, I think they should have told her to come clean or she has to leave. They do eventually get to the point where they think Martha needs therapy, but I think it takes them way too long to get there.

I think the movie has some great ideas, but it needed a rewrite or two to actually make it entertaining. It was a chore to sit through, and I saw several walkouts at the screening I attended.