I’m actually going to be seeing Martha Marcy May Marlene again later this week as star Elizabeth Olsen and director Sean Durkin are coming to Seattle as part of a press tour before the film sets off to play at the Toronto Film Festival in advance of its October 21 release.
I saw it at Cannes after it made such a big splash at Sundance earlier in the year and in my review I wrote that it succeeds “in its tight editing and deliberately ambiguous ending, but the reason for it all is still a bit of a blur.” This isn’t to say films need to have a reason to exist outside of telling a story, but in my second viewing I’m curious to see if I can find more of an emotional connection with Olsen’s lead character, and maybe learn a little more about her that I didn’t get out of the first viewing.
The story is very much in the same vein as the Manson family as a young girl (Olsen) flees a cult and attempts to re-assimilate with her family, but paranoia sets in to a point you begin to believe she may never be able to go back to being “normal”.
The film is a thriller, that’s for sure, and the more I talk about it the more I actually can’t wait to see it again.
That said, here are a pair of posters for the film that just debuted over at Entertainment Weekly. You can read the rest of my Cannes review right here.
The posters feature QR codes that will allow you to access exclusive trailers when you scan them with your smart phone. The posters will be seen on the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Los Angeles alone, so the chance of seeing them in the wild is quite slim.
