Director: Sean Durkin
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 2.0
A traumatized young lady (Elizabeth Olsen) flees a creepy cult headed by an enigmatic Manson-like figure (the irreplaceable John Hawkes) to stay with her sister (Sarah Paulson) and her sister's well-to-do husband (Hugh Dancy) at their lake house ... but is consistently haunted by flashbacks of abuse at the hands of the cult members. Coy and fundamentally shallow, Durkin establishes a mood of genuine tension but hedges on the particulars: he doesn't provide much of a political link between the communal lives of the cult and the bourgeois Paulson-Dancy marriage (with their spacious living arrangements), and he doesn't really delve into Olsen's back story and why she chose to feel the need to be abused and controlled by Hawkes and company and the way he fetishizes Olsen's body is troubling in light of the fact that her character is essentially a rape victim. What remains is a showcase for Olsen to use those NYU acting chops and appear genuinely depressed and haunted - it's a daunting performance (Hawkes also shines with his limited screen time), but only speaks to the experience of living with trauma, excising the parts about what it means to recover from it.
