The director of Martha Marcy May Marlene has delivered an accomplished follow-up focused on a family imploding in a gloomy house in Surrey
There’s always a warm homecoming at festivals for directors who return after breaking out there years prior, as well as an unspoken fear that their follow-up might not have quite the same impact. In 2011, Sean Durkin premiered his first feature, the chilly psychodrama Martha Marcy May Marlene, at Sundance and won a directing award as well as a flurry of excitable reviews, planting his name, as well as star Elizabeth Olsen’s, on the map. It was the kind of jolting debut that made anyone who watched it curious to know what he would do next. In the nine years since, he directed the disturbing
British miniseries Southcliffe, but has been notably absent from the big screen. He returns to the fold this year with the accomplished and uneasy family drama The Nest, a film with a delicate slow build that feels fitting for a director who’s also taken his time to make it.
Related: Downhill review – Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus crash with redundant remake