Mary Last Seen

A man takes a woman he's dating further away from what she knows, and questions are raised about his intentions.

Written and directed by Sean Durkin, this short serves as a prequel or test run of his masterful Martha Marcy May Marlene. It features some of the same people, elements and settings. The camerawork puts you right there with the youths. Dialog feels natural in both script and delivery. The 13 and a half minutes fly by.

This features a little strong language, nudity and sexuality. I recommend this to fans of the aforementioned theatrical film. 7/10.

Mary Last Seen (2010)

*** (out of 4)

Director Sean Durkin made this short film while he was waiting for his first feature, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, to go into production. The film follows a boyfriend taking his girlfriend on a little trip but soon we realize that he's not all he's cracked up to be. Before the film starts there were some notes from the director talking about filming this short, how much it cost and what he was wanted to get out of it. He says that he wanted to the film to be a good comparison piece to his feature but at the same time he wanted this to work on its own. On its own I really didn't think the short worked well enough but when you compare it to the feature is when you get the most out of it. I thought it was interesting seeing how one would be lured into such a cult and I thought this aspect of the film worked. I thought the most interesting thing was just seeing how this early stage of the cult works compared to the type of stuff that we'd see from the feature. It certainly doesn't hurt having Brady Corbet playing the boyfriend role, which is quite similar to what he'd play in the feature. I think it would be best to watch the feature first and then follow it up with this short film. It certainly looks very professional for a $500 price tag and it shows some interesting touches that would be stretched out in the feature.