Prior to 2011, you probably had no idea that adorable moppets Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen had a younger sister. Martha Marcy May Marlene put paid to that, introducing 22-year-old Elizabeth Olsen as one of cinema’s most exciting new talents.

She plays a young woman who escapes the clutches of a cult in the Catskill Mountains. As she holes up with her sister (Sarah Paulson), we learn her story through terrifying flashbacks.

Olsen’s fantastic – haunted, ephemeral, wacko – and debut director Sean Durkin evokes a gloomy, suffocating mood. John Hawkes (Winter's Bone), meanwhile, is nothing short of spellbinding as the cult’s dangerous, alluring leader.