It’s never a good sign when a “thriller” is less than thrilling. The Marsh King’s Daughter started out as an original novel written by Karen Dionne in 2018, featuring a cracking good premise about the lies and secrets that a survivalist father keeps from his young daughter. Director Neil Burger has translated the book to film and, instead of edge-of-your-seat tension, The Marsh King’s Daughter can’t seem to get out of neutral. While the first third establishes the premise with a lot of promise and a compelling backstory, the rest of the film can’t rise above perfunctory cat-and-mouse dynamics that lack urgency and emotional stakes.
In keeping with Dionne’s book, The Marsh King’s Daughter focuses on the harrowing, singular experience of Helena Pelletier. Raised in the remote riverlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, 12-year-old Helena is a whiz in the woods. The only child of an emotionally distant mother (Caren Pistorius) and a doting mountain man father, Jacob Holbrook (Ben Mendelsohn), Helena spends all of her time living off the land. Bonding with her father means absorbing his intricate lessons on effective hunting, abiding by his singular rule of protecting their family and navigating his mercurial temper. Success engenders his warm praise, and the reward of hand-drawn ink tattoos that commemorate her moments of achievement—or failure. It’s only when an outsider accidentally stumbles into the perimeter of their cabin that Helena’s entire world is shaken.
Her reserved mother screams for the man’s help, asserting that they are being held against their will. The only world Helena has ever known turns out to be a lie. She was born and raised in captivity with her kidnapped mother, and their escape turns her bucolic life upside-down.
After a brutal separation from Jacob when he’s arrested, he promises that he’ll find Helena, and the story jumps ahead two decades. Adult Helena (Daisy Ridley) is a shadow of her passionate younger self. She’s got a boring accounting job, beloved daughter Marigold (Joey Carson) and loving professor husband Stephen (Garrett Hedlund). But Helena slinks along the fringes of normal society, hiding her copious tattoos from curious eyes and avoiding social engagements like the plague. It’s like she’s never seen a day of therapy in her life, which doesn’t make much practical sense as she’s certainly had the resilience to carve out a new life. But her actions make it impossible to buy how she’s managed to do so. Burger directs Ridley to play Helena with such emotional vacancy that it’s hard to tell if she even likes Stephen, much less loves him. It’s baffling why you’d cast an actress as naturally emotive and expressive as Ridley, then strip her of her greatest strengths.
Elle Smith and Mark L. Smith’s script is sparse when it comes to giving us a sense of Helena’s attachment to anyone outside of Marigold. She was estranged from her mother, who shattered the life she loved, and she’s got no friends or confidants to let us know what’s going on in her interior world.
Just once do we get a taste of who she is now, in the best scene in the entirety of the adult portion of the film. Helena uses her tattoos to finally explain to Stephen why she’s never shared her story with him, or anyone outside of her step-dad Clark (Gil Birmingham), the cop who first worked their case. Aside from that, Helena is an emotional cypher. How does she feel about Jacob today? Has she ever been happy outside of her forest life? Why has she seemingly remained in emotional stasis for decades? Neither the script nor Burger seem to care that we know, which makes it hard for us to care about the character.
And so The Marsh King’s Daughter essentially turns into a two-hander action flick as Helena and Jacob track one another with a lot of callback to the lessons she learned as a little girl. As always, Ridley is excellent when playing intense physicality. There’s no question that Helena is at home in the woods, is resourceful when forced into precarious situations and is a plausible adversary for Jacob. It’s disappointing that Mendelsohn never gets the chance to make Jacob anything more than a backwoods villain whose motivations remain as vague as the moniker of “the Marsh King,” given to him by the outside world. Because of that, the final confrontations and eventual climax are underwhelming.
Yet, in addition to the compelling prologue, The Marsh King’s Daughter is also beautiful to watch. Cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler is very successful in presenting the raw yet seductive landscape of Jacob and Helena’s haunts, both as a shared playground and a minefield of lurking dangers. He and Burger’s choice of naturalistic lenses convey Helena’s struggle to exist in regular society as she still yearns for the wild spaces she shared with her father. If only the filmmakers were as interested in presenting Helena’s emotional life with the same kind of depth, The Marsh King’s Daughter would have far higher final stakes and a reason for us to care where Helena ends up.
Director: Neil Burger
Writers: Elle Smith, Mark L. Smith
Starring: Daisy Ridley, Ben Mendelsohn, Garrett Hedlund, Caren Pistorius, Brooklynn Prince, Gil Birmingham
Release Date: November 3, 2023
Tara Bennett is a Los Angeles-based writer covering film, television and pop culture for publications such as SFX Magazine, Total Film, SYFY Wire and more. She’s also written books on Sons of Anarchy, Outlander, Fringe, The Story of Marvel Studios and The Art of Avatar: The Way of Water. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraDBennett or Instagram @TaraDBen