You may think Elizabeth Olsen’s face is familiar, but apart from that bone structure, this film bears no resemblance to anything you’ve ever seen an Olsen in. Mary-Kate and Ashley’s younger sister delivers what’s sure to be a career launching performance as the vulnerable Martha, a young woman recently escaped from a misogynistic cult in the Catskills.

The film opens with a series of shots in an idyllic but evidently isolated farm, as the camera moves inside the house to show a room full of sleeping women I couldn’t help but be reminded of Coppola’s Virgin Suicides. The slight disarray of pots and pans coupled with the mingling oestrogen make it seem as though the Lisbon sisters continued their solitary, unhappy lives after all. Director Sean Durkin, who is both ambitious and assured in his debut feature, instantly establishes a sense of ominous foreboding that continues as a subtle simmer throughout the film.

The camera then follows Martha (or Marcy May as she is re-named) when she breaks out and runs through the woods, away from subjugation and towards what she hopes will be assimilation into ‘normal’ life with her sister and brother-in-law. Unfortunately her experiences within the cult have left her scarred and returning to society proves a difficult task for the fragile Martha.

The pace of the film is relatively slow, it’s like watching someone drop a glass then waiting for a painstakingly beautiful 120 minutes for it to finally shatter. Cracks slowly emerge in the form of Durkin’s clever visual rhymes, in which Martha’s past at the farm is seamlessly interlaced with her present, where she’s desperately trying to adjust to life at her sister’s lake house. Shots of Olsen swimming in the lake are matched with Pre-Raphaelite-style glimpses of naked bodies frolicking in natural pools. At times it’s hard to distinguish between past, present and imagination, drawing us further into Martha’s paranoia.

The cinematography will steal your breath; frames are composed elegantly with a studied choice of focal length and depth of field. Some shots linger a little longer than necessary but this adds to the eerie tension that builds throughout the film, as does the haunting sound design.

John Hawkes, even more haggard and wild here than in Winter’s Bone gives a mesmerising performance as the cult leader, undercurrents of menace bubble beneath his charismatic façade. The result is pitch-perfect creepiness. Despite the fact that it’s now been ten days since I saw this film, I think I’ve managed to mention it about once every hour to anyone who’ll listen, and unfortunately for those of you that know me, I don’t think I’ll be stopping anytime soon.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is out February 3rd