The Marsh King's Daughter is a 2023 Psychological Thriller film, based on the novel of the same name by Karen Dionne. The film was directed by Neil Burger, with the screenplay co-written by Mark L. Smith and Elle Smith. It stars Daisy Ridley, Ben Mendelsohn, Garrett Hedlund, Gil Birmingham and Caren Pistorius.
Helena Pelletier (Ridley) appears to be a normal woman living an idyllic life with her husband Stephen (Hedlund) and their daughter Marigold. However, her past is far from normal: she is the daughter of Jacob Holbrook (Mendelsohn), the notorious "Marsh King", a reclusive survivalist, kidnapper, rapist and murderer who abducted her mother (Pistorius) and held her captive in remote marshland for over a decade. Helena herself was raised in the wilderness, unaware she and her mother were Jacob's prisoners until she was ten years old. When Helena is informed that Jacob has recently escaped from prison, she fears for her family's safety. Using the survival skills her father taught her, Helena sets out to protect herself and her family, finally confronting the dark past she had tried to bury.
The film was released on November 3rd 2023. The trailer can be viewed here
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Tropes found here include:
- Adaptational Backstory Change:
- in the novel, Jacob is part Ojibwe and the teachings and tattoos he imparts to Helena are a part of his heritage (albeit a part he apparently taught himself). With Jacob being played by Ben Mendelsohn, this aspect of his character is ignored, and instead the indigenous American character Clark says Jacob appropriated and warped his people's traditions.
- the film also changes Helena's post-marsh upbringing to give her a stepfather, Clark (played by Gil Birmingham). In the book Beth lived with her parents and never married.
- Adaptational Dumbass: Movie Helena is a lot less savvy than Book Helena, setting out to confront her father alone, unarmed except for her hunting knife, without even telling her husband to take their daughter away from the house. She then apparently assumes that he'll leave them alone because she asked him nicely.
- Adaptational Job Change: in the book, Helena makes income selling homemade jams and jellies using wild ingredients she forages for by hand. In the film, she has an unspecified bland office job involving spreadsheets.
- Advertising by Association: It was advertised as being "From the producer and co-writer of The Revenant" and "From the director of Limitless".
- Animal Motif: Deer come up repeatedly in the trailer, associated with Helena and her family. At the start of the trailer, Helena's daughter Marigold shows her mother a diorama she made of a baby deer's habitat, with rocks for the deer to hide from hunters behind, to which Helena replies it's a "smart deer". Helena is shown hunting a deer as a child and has a deer tattooed on her neck, explaining that her father gave her the tattoo when she made her first kill.
- Archnemesis Dad: The villain of the story is Jacob Holbrook, the evil father of main protagonist Helena Pelletier. He held her and her mother captive until Helena was ten and has recently escaped from prison. Helena fears he will now come after her and her family.
- Broken Pedestal: In Helena's childhood she had a close, affectionate relationship with her father (aside from that time he chucked her in a hole for not shooting a wolf) who taught her how to track and hunt animals. Her admiration of him causes her to actively resist her mother's escape attempt, but as an adult she knows the truth. She tells her husband "I have trust issues because everyone told me the person I believed in the most was really a monster."
- Canon Foreigner: Helena's stepfather Clark, who doesn't exist in the book. He was one of the police officers who apprehended her father, and tries to be a good influence on Helena, though they don't appear to be close.
- Child by Rape: Helena; though the film is less overt about it, Beth was clearly Jacob's hostage and unwilling captive. Helena thinks her mother resented her for this.
- Dark Secret: The trailer shows that Helena kept her disturbing past a secret from her husband, as Stephen is initially confused when the police show up at their house asking about his wife's father and says he was under the impression both her parents died in a car accident. Helena reluctantly states "That's what I told you". Considering that Helena's father is a notorious violent criminal who kidnapped and raped her mother, it wouldn't be surprising Helena wanted to put it all behind her and have a normal life, though later in the trailer Stephen tells her he wishes she'd told him the truth.
- Facial Markings: Helena has faint dots tattooed across her cheeks, given to her by her father as a child; in the trailer she says "these were the only tears my father ever wanted to see".
- Fairytale Motif: The title and basic premise are references to the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale of the same name, in which the titular character is the daughter of a cruel Marsh King and the fairy princess he kidnapped.
- The Film of the Book: It's based on the 2017 novel of the same name.
- Great Escape: The present-day plot is kicked off by Jacob Holbrook and another prisoner escaping from jail; while being transported in a prison van, Jacob opens his handcuffs with a lockpick hidden in his mouth and kills the two guards.
- Never My Fault: Jacob is a textbook narcissist, claiming he and Beth "ran away together" rather than it being an unwilling abduction. He blames all the Marsh King stuff on "lies" told to Helena by Beth and others, though Helena doesn't believe him.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: a good chunk of the book is just Helena walking silently through the woods by herself or looking at corpses, aside from her marsh flashbacks. This wouldn't make for good cinema, of course, so the film shortens some aspects and expands on others:
- Helena's life in the marsh is reduced to a short series of scenes at the start, and a few brief flashbacks thereafter.
- Helena and Beth's escape from Jacob is significantly shorter — rather than Helena slowly learning the truth about her father as he tortures the innocent man who discovered their cabin, Jacob shoots him immediately and Beth clubs an uncooperative Helena with a rock and drives them both to safety on the man's ATV. Helena doesn't learn of her father's crimes until they're at the police station.
- Rather than immediately setting out to find her father after he escapes, Helena spends more time with her husband and daughter and reconnects with her stepfather after Jacob throws the authorities off his trail by faking his own death. Once it becomes clear that he is very much alive and stalking her family, *then* Helena goes looking for him.
- The confrontation between Helena and her father is much more drawn out, with multiple confrontations and a surprise appearance from Clark.
- Protect This House: Before she realizes Jacob is still alive, Helena still secures all her house's doors and windows, and sets up a snare with a bell and tripwire in the woods behind it. Unfortunately he gets in anyway.
- Race Lift: in the novel, Jacob's father was Ojibwe, and he imparts some of their culture and teachings to Helena. Given he is played here by a white guy from Australia,
well… he's never attributed any Ojibwe background, and the stuff he teaches Helena is written off as cultural appropriation (and mostly inaccurate, at that — see Slave Brand, below). - Slave Brand: Helena and Jacob have the same markings tattooed on their hands, with Jacob saying it means "family". However, Helena's indigenous stepdad Clark later tells her the tattoo actually means "owned, not family. Don't confuse the two."
- Tagline: "Fear the past or face it".
- Time-Shifted Actor: Daisy Ridley plays Helena as an adult, while Brooklynn Prince portrays her as a child.
- Trip Trap: The trailer depicts Helena tying a tripwire between trees and attaching a bell, presumably to alert her if anyone walks into it.
