"It takes less than five minutes for Martha Marcy May Marlene to go from lulling to deeply unnerving, its mood seamlessly shifting from bucolic observance to low-grade but steady dread. Writer-director Sean Durkin's story of a woman fleeing a cultlike community heralds the debut of an impressive filmmaking talent and the equally promising arrival of actress Elizabeth Olsen. With uncanny quiet and low-grade action, Durkin and Olsen keep us fretting about when, and in what form, violence might arrive. A movie can be as creepy as all get-out without screams or splatter. Durkin depicts a horror that some among us actually live, where the search for family leads to something familiar and dangerous." - Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post.