‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’ Ending Explained: Is Martha Stalked by the Cult or Simply Hallucinating?

‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’ is a psychological thriller drama film directed and written by Sean Durkin. The movie was released in 2011 and received critical acclaim for its intense storytelling and the standout performance of its lead actress, Elizabeth Olsen. What makes ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’ different than most other projects about cults is the fact that almost no one in Martha’s immediate surroundings has any idea that she has gone through severe psychological trauma, one which she might never recover from which resulted in some uncomfortable and tense moments in the movie.

One of the most intense moments in the movie, however, is the ending itself since it doesn’t really offer us any resolution to Martha’s story. Let’s see whether we can explain it in more detail.

Martha escapes from the cult only physically, mentally she is still there

The movie simultaneously shows us Martha’s time in the cult and the present as she struggles to adapt to freedom while living with her sister and her husband. We know that prior to contacting her sister, Martha had been with the Cult in the Catskill Mountains for two years without contacting anybody.

The movie opens up with the scene of Martha running away from the Cult house through the forest; in the diner, she devours a burger, and after her brother from the Cult tries to persuade her to return, she contacts her sister Lucy, who is shocked to hear from her after all that time. Her sister comes to pick her up and takes her to the vacation house she is currently staying in with her husband, Ted, who never had the opportunity to meet Martha due to her going to MIA several years ago.

This is really where the trouble begins as Martha soon proves to be severely unadjusted to normal life and complicates even things between Lucy and Ted. She is confused and isolated, has trouble controlling her behavior, and at times displays psychosis and severe paranoia. She also has trouble telling reality from fiction apart, so pretty much any “flashback” we’ve seen doesn’t necessarily have to reflect what really took place.

But let’s start at the beginning.

We don’t really know how Martha joined the Cult

The earliest point in Martha’s history with the Cult is when she met Patrick for the first time; she was hanging out with Zoe when Patrick approached her, and based on what the movie implies, he enchanted both of the girls with his magnetic personality. Patrick is the Cult leader and calls the shots around the house, like all Cult leaders his main tactics are emotional blackmail, separation of the victim from their previous life and identity and manipulation. A few seconds after meeting Patrick, he assigns to Martha a new name, “Marcy May.”

This is a well-known tactic via which Cult leaders try to mold their new recruits, but Martha, at that time, doesn’t see it as anything but harmless fun; she also retorts that her grandmother was called Marcy. Soon after joining the cult, Martha sees that she needs to work physically around the house to “earn her keep.” They eat just enough to keep them going and are put in a permanent state of weakness via malnutrition and various drugs. Martha has to go through a “cleansing” ritual, aka she needs to let Patrick rape her to cleanse her. Martha is not okay with this, but Zoe gaslights her into believing that something special took place, something magical and that she is now a legitimate member of the family.

All the cult members are twisted in one way or another, and despite how collectively peaceful it seems, it’s everything but. The Cult members often engage in dangerous behavior; they are supposed to ask their former families for money when things get tough, they have a shooting range, and often rob houses for supplies. In one scene, Patrick forces Martha to shoot the cat that is supposedly dying of cancer. Martha can’t do it, but another cult member not only shoots the “dying” cat but shoots the healthy cat as well. They are all bordering on psychopathy, but Martha is convinced that she is Patrick’s favorite.

Up until now, Martha was the one who was gaslit but now it’s time for her to take on the role of the one that does gaslighting, a new girl Sarah joins the cult, and Martha takes on the role of a mentor. She is supposed to teach her about their ways but also to prepare her for rape, pardon “the cleansing ritual.” There are some moments of jealousy, but the straw that broke the camel’s back is the fact that the cult killed an innocent man because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The cult broke into his house, and when he was home, they misjudged the situation. The man discovered them and asked them to leave. He wouldn’t call the police as soon as they didn’t steal anything. Just as they are about to leave a cult member attacks him from behind stabbing him several times, leaving him for the dead. Martha’s whole reality shattered at that moment, and no matter how much Patrick tried to gaslight her, she decided to run away and never turn back.

Ted immediately notices that something is very wrong with Martha

Now, Martha told her sister that she ran away from her boyfriend, and that’s all there is to it. She was covered with bruises and pretty much exhausted when she met her sister, so she spent the first few days in a sleep haze. However, even in these first few days, Martha displayed highly unpredictable behavior; she refused to eat most of the time and jumped into the lake completely naked despite there being children in the vicinity.

Lucy tried to chuck it up to Martha being stressed, but Ted immidetly noticed that there has to be something more to. Martha also asked Lucy strangely personal and confusing questions. She was either having trouble sleeping or sleeping too much. She was urinating while sleeping, and at one point, she sneaked into Lucy’s and Ted’s bed while they were having sex which pissed Ted off completely and freaked out Lucy.

Lucy believed that Martha would eventually come around, but her mental state was further deteriorating the more she was faced with real life.

Ted wants Martha out of the house

It became clear that Martha was more than just “mentally exhausted” one night during dinner when Ted asked her what her plans for the future were. Martha, brainwashed by the Cult, started insulting their materialist way of life and telling them they are wrong in the way they live things. She also said that she doesn’t plan anything and that the future is uncertain.

Ted feels personally called out and starts yelling at Martha about how she eats his food and lives under his roof and yet doesn’t have the common sense to respect him. Ted has a stern talk with his wife and tells her that since they are trying for a child, it would perhaps be dangerous for Martha to be around. Martha hears everything but doesn’t make an attempt to make amends with Ted, and neither is she willing to tell her sister what really happened.

Martha’s symptoms become physical

Martha, like most of the former cult members, has the urge to contact them so her life can get a dose of “stability.” She speaks two words over the phone and immediately hangs up, realizing what she’s done. She doesn’t crave the cult; she craves that Patrick called her special and craves not really being responsible for the things she’s doing. She wants to be part of the hive once again; no one told her that she was insane while she was part of the cult, right? It wasn’t expected of her to find a job and have responsibilities. She was simply existing as a part of a larger, darker “whole.”

Ted and Lucy throw a party, and Lucy makes every attempt to make Martha presentable. Martha makes some attempts to socialize but her weird behaviour is almost instantly noted by other people. Martha makes her way to the bar, and a completely innocent bartender gets pulled into her mess as she accuses him of being a cult member. She has a mental breakdown, and Ted and Lucy are forced to sedate her.

Ted also says to Lucy that she needs to go and Martha needs to get committed, and Lucy agrees, clearly seeing that her sister needs more help than she can provide.

What happened to Martha in the end?

Lucy, Ted, and Martha reached an agreement to get Martha into a mental institution. Before she leaves, she goes to swim in the lake, and she sees a car parked on the other side and someone who looks like Patrick watching her. She is utterly terrified and leaves the lake. On their way to the mental institution, Martha is riding in the back seat when a man almost causes an accident. We can see a silhouette of a man wearing a white shirt returning to his SUV, which looks like the one Patric was driving. Martha is once again terrified that the cult members are after her.

So, the thing with this ending is that we can’t really trust Martha’s judgment; we are seeing everything through Martha’s eyes, and she is proven to be quite unreliable due to her mental issues. It’s quite possible that after she called the Cult, they somehow managed to track her down and are truly stalking her. Cults do resort to such measures, especially members of a cult who killed someone, and one of the witnesses is ready to rejoin the general population and quite possibly rat them out. I mean think about all of those horror stories related to former members of the Church of Scientology, they are stalking people years after they have left the church, while they are at home, at workplace or on vacations.

Another possibility is that Martha is simply hallucinating and paranoid; she accuses an innocent man of being a cult member, and she asks Lucy how to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. And we’ve never seen clearly Patrick or anybody else from the cult stalking her directly, it’s quite possible that those figures in the distance are simply manifestation of paranoia. Martha is most likely, based on her mental and physical symptoms, suffering from PTSD, and one of the known symptoms of those conditions are hallucination and psychosis.

The third scenario is related to the second one, Martha is probably seeing cult members in everyone because she is despairing and aware that leaving them, leaving her former lifestyle wouldn’t be as easy. It’s possible that the last few shots of the movie were the director’s way of saying that Martha will forever be “stalked” and “haunted” by what she’s done and her association with the cult. She will spend the rest of ther days watching over her shoulder, seeing Patrick in everything or quite possibly rejoin them when push comes to shove.

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