Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

DogFilmCritic This film which really depicts life in a Cult and the programming that accompanies it. In order to fit into a cult one cannot question anything - when she escapes the enormous impact it has had on her emerges, it leads you through her emotions and how she can't adapt to life outside the cult nor did she fully embrace life inside it, she is a boat without a sail stuck in the middle of an emotionless sea, she feels she can't fit anywhere or that the world can't adapt to her even worst she can't communicate how she truly feels. The relationship with her sister is very revealing yet both have build a large wall between them that her older sister wants to tear down. Martha has different understanding of how life works a reason why she let some things slide in the cult (the sex, the lifestyle, because it was all explained to her as something normal), how sometimes that lifestyle was comforting and why other things were horrible and bothered her, and the subtext was so good, and disturbing, particularly when she says "there's other ways of living", giving a direct critic to her sister and her husband and showing that she wasn't fond of there lifestyle choices and leading to her family can't understand her behavior and labeling her as an outsider.MMMM had real potential and it made Elizabeth Olsens careers but sadly the characters weren't better developed and more backstory wasn't given, I'm not saying I have to be spoon fed the hole story in order to understand it but Wouldn't it be fascinating to know where Martha encountered Patrick's group for the first time? and how she was convinced to join them, Wouldn't you love to know more about Martha's home life growing up and why it compelled her to join a the cult? This film should've focused more on the characters motivations and some background to it.Yes the story is broken from modern stand point in that it isn't a linear progression. The way they laid the past and the present together and allowed them to twist together makes the movie. it's not a thriller, its telling the life of a young women and her lack personality, it was a bit drab and unconvincing. It was watchable. The ending was like they ran out of film stock...or the director thought "I'll be clever by having an abrupt non-ending and the audience will figure the ending for themselves it's not like that's my job ". But it wasn't clever, just incomplete and even if it was meant like that we wanted some sort of closure, all the ending dose it feels cheap.

juneebuggy Lots of rave reviews out there for this movie but except for the outstanding performance from Elizabeth Olsen I came away underwhelmed. I also failed to see how this is a "psychological thriller" as its being plugged. The opening scene does real you in; a young woman on the run, climbs out a window, takes off into the woods, she is being chased. She phones her mom, doesn't want her help then suddenly is at her yuppie sisters house where she refuses to explain where she has been for 2 years.The remainder of the movie takes place in the sisters house, with flashbacks and haunting memories from Martha who has escaped from a cult. Her sister (played by Sarah Paulson) keeps asking what is wrong with you? at Martha's increasingly erratic behaviour. She does weird things, socially unacceptable things, the husband (Hugh Dancy) just wants her gone, "she needs help". Martha gets increasingly more paranoid thinking the cult members are trying to track her down. She pees her pants, her flashbacks get more violent, rape, robbery a stabbing. Elizabeth Olsen does a fantastic job with all this.John Hawkes is the cult leader, a vague but charismatic character -he is good in everything he does. Still I failed to see the point of this movie especially with the whole non-ending business that comes right at a point when we might actually get some of that "psychological thriller" I keep being promised. Nope its over.Randomly there are multiple scenes of people eating in this. In fact they always seemed to be eating, picking at food or pushing their food around a plate through the dialogue; in diners, breakfast, dinner, big bowls of soup for the men at the cult house, little bowls for the segregated women later on. Weird. 1/31/16

Kittycat63 I came across this the other night / early morning when I was channel surfing and from the TV description of it it sounded interesting so I thought I'd give it a go as I like a good thriller / drama (good being the operative word!).Admittedly, I missed the beginning and was tired at the time and on the verge of dozing off anyway, unless I had been watching something incredibly riveting, and this movie was so NOT incredibly riveting that I did actually doze off after the first few hopeful minutes of watching it. The reviewed who likened it to waiting for a kettle to boil for a couple of hours only to realise it wasn't plugged in hit the nail on the head - this movie is so turgid, slow moving and dull it was enough to put me into a catatonic trance. I tried in vain to keep my eyes open in the hope that it would pick up and become more intriguing but it just plodded on and on and sleep took over! I did wake up after about 15 minutes or so but the film was still dragging on lethargically so I decided sleep was much more important than this nonsense and went to bed.I really can't recommend this movie at all from what I saw of it - it's just bland, boring and dragged on and on and on. It's the kind of movie that potentially could have been good but the storyline was just too vapid and unlikely. What a washout!

brchthethird This was an excellent psychological drama with an impressive performance by Elizabeth Olsen. She plays a young woman who escapes from a cult and stays with her sister, but still has memories of the life she left behind that interfere with her ability to reintegrate. The whole story is rather subdued, but has some moments of quiet intensity and pain. I also liked how the story of her past and her present are intercut and told side by side, with each event having a parallel in or triggering a memory of something that happened to her before. The only downside was (what I felt to be) a rather anti-climactic ending. Other than that, it was a great indie film.