the audience applauded

A Masterpiece!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

First off....I am starting to not agree with critics views on a movie being good. I was pissed that I wasted my time in watching a long and drawn out movie. It had it moments where you thought Olsen's character would explain more of what happened to her own sister but nope....she is just weird and crazy. Elizabeth Olsen's part was great and on point in acting. The story line was just a bore. The ending really pissed me off. It was one of the those endings when the movie just ends. I am glad I did not go to the movies to see this.

I expected the movie to be great since one of the producers is Antonio Campos he's known for his unique confusing films he make ,not to forget to mention the master of this movie Sean Durkin , what an outstanding ,catching story ! this man must win an Oscar just saying . this movie as my title says keep you wondering about the missing pieces of the story it doesn't make the film boring at all it makes it mystery there's philosophical arguments that will make you think , i like the eccentric character rolled by Elizabeth Olsen it has a lot of drama and weird actions i don't think any other actor can do the same job she did she really fir the role . if you're into mystery/drama types of movies go watch this now .

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

The movie starts with Martha escaping a cult and managing to contact her sole real family left - her sister - who comes to pick her up and takes her in her grand house at a lake. But the aftermath process after escaping the cult still needs to start - the flashbacks of the abuse she lived through as well as the bonding she experienced, which typically belong to PTSD.For some viewers there may seem to be plot holes, like Martha eating openly at a diner in the village nearby the cult. But daylight and a public place seems instinctively the safest place for her, even though when confronted in the diner by the second hand of the cult's leader Patrick she does not have the courage to speak out to the server. While the second hand approaches her, talks to her, how the cult leader misses and worries about her, he leaves, nor forces her back. This seems weird on the surface when you know this cult burglarizes homes and murders people and the cult wouldn't want to have witnesses roaming free. However, cult leaders know the extent of the emotional and psychological impact they have. Abuse causes what's called a trauma bond within the target (and it doesn't have to be physical abuse), and it's stronger than any love bond and highly addictive. They know that soon enough she'll miss them more than she fears, distrusts or even hates them. And without proper psychological guidance she won't have the tools to quit the oxytocin addiction (bonding hormone) and the obsessive thoughts about them.This is what we witness with Martha. She has nightmares and memory flashes of events when she was with the cult: her loss of her name and it being changed into Marcy, her ritual drug-rape by the cult leader and the other women telling her how to feel about it ('it's a good thing', 'smile') and so negating her the right to feel how she really feels about it (awful, raped, betrayed); cult leader Patrick seemingly putting her on a pedestal by singing a song about her ('she's a picture') and at the same time devaluing her ('and nothing more'), and then later she doing the same thing to the next new recruited girl...In a way the flashbacks during the PTSD process are necessary in order to heal from the trauma and abuse. The victim has negated their feelings (the pain, the anger, the shock) about the traumatic events when they occur, and yet one cannot start the mourning and healing process of both the separation and trauma without first actually reconnecting with her or his feelings locked away of that time. It's not so much that victims forgot the events, but they push it away and forgot how they felt about it deep down at the time.The problem for Martha is that neither her sister nor her brother in law even know that she lived with a cult. Martha never tells them. To them she stopped calling her sister two years ago, and she lived with a boyfriend for two years. Her sister's husband wants to instill his version of a responsible person in her - think of a career, behave normal, don't live off your sister and me for such a long time. Her sister tries to give her space, patience, time and company, but naturally shows her frustration when she hits the wall around Martha. She suspects Martha has been abused, but makes the common mistake to suspect the ex-boyfriend hit her, not knowing that emotional and mental abuse has as damaging impact.As the flashbacks emerge of the community life and her sister and brother-in-law behave towards her as if they expect she should be 'normal' the addictive bond rears its head up and she calls the cult, her 'new family'. For the cult this is a sign that she is ready to return to the fold.While the remote lake house of her sister seems a great retreat to heal from the trauma, it actually only strengthens her fears and for good reasons. The cult lived in a remote area nearby similar grand lake houses. They burglarized and even murdered in such homes. Now she's living in such one. Together with the PSTD, the nightmares and a triggering environment, and her mistake to call the cult from her sister's home, it's not surprising that she increasingly starts to fear for the cult to come and seek her out and violently take her 'home' again. For outsiders it seems she's paranoid, but paranoia is an unreasonable fear. Martha's fear is not unreasonable, though the movie remains ambiguous about the fact whether the cult is truly trying to apprehend her again.