If you were afraid—running for your life—where would you go?
Helena heard this question from her father 20 years ago. They were stalking a deer—and hopefully their supper that night. The 10-year-old Helena scanned the terrain and knew the buck wouldn’t have chosen the marshy meadow sprawling in front of her. No, he would’ve done deeper into the woods, hoping to hide.
For as long as Helena could remember, she’d hunted with her father. He’d ask her questions all the time (Is the blood warm or cold? Is the animal walking or running?), teaching her with each one how to hunt a little better, kill a little easier. For Helena, it was heaven: Just her and her father, Jacob, surrounded by green and blue, water and dirt. And, if they were lucky, dinner.
Helena’s mother didn’t understand the beauty and power of nature. She couldn’t. Jacob said she never had much imagination, and Helena believed it. Oh, Mother was OK sometimes. But she was nothing like Father. He was her hero, her guardian, her best friend. Jacob called her “Little Shadow.”
And then her mother had to ruin it all.
Mother’s perspective of that “idyllic” life? Far different than Helena’s—and far from idyllic. A dozen years ago, Jacob kidnapped the woman and kept her a prisoner. Helena was the product of the habitual rape she suffered. But she loved the girl. And when the opportunity came to escape—thanks to a doomed, lost adventurer and his ATV—she wasn’t going to leave Helena behind.
It’s been 20 years since her mom pulled her from the marshlands and into the civilized world. Her mother committed suicide years ago. Her father’s in prison—and should be for the rest of his life.
And Helena? She’s tried to move on. She has a job. A husband. And most importantly, a little girl of her own. No one knows who her father is; no one knows about her 10 years in the marsh.
Until, that is, Jacob escapes—killing two guards along the way.
Helena doesn’t think that her father knows where she is. How could he? But she feels him. She senses that he’s close. And even though she knows, rationally, that her dad was a bad, bad man, she still remembers those days in the woods, when it was just the two of them.
But she has her own life now. Her own family. She thinks of her own daughter, Marigold. And she worries.
If you were afraid—running for your life—where would you go?
She hopes it won’t come to that. But her father also taught her to be prepared … always.
Helena has grown into a loving mom. She cares deeply for her little girl, and she’ll do pretty much anything to protect her.
Her relationship with other people? Well, that’s a little more complex. She’s done her best to divide her life into two: the years she spent in the marsh with her father and her life after. And anyone who straddled both—her mom, her stepfather Clark—she’s had trouble with. In a way, The Marsh King’s Daughter is a story of healing, of Helena reconciling those two halves of her life.
It’s a forced reconciliation: When Jacob escapes, her secrets are spilled. She never told her husband about her parents, and he understandably feels betrayed. But their relationship survives the shock. Helena reaches out to Clark, too—introducing Marigold to her “grandpa” for the first time.
And while Helena can’t patch up her relationship with her late mother, her memories grow stronger and more generous. Her understanding of the woman softens and grows. For most of her life, Helena considered her mother weak. But as she looks back, Helena comes to understand how strong she really was.
We hear that Jacob coopted the “beliefs” of the Ojibwe, a Native American people, to suit his own agenda. For instance, Jacob tattooed a symbol on Helena’s hand when she was a child, which Jacob said meant “family.” Clark (who’s Ojibwe himself) says that the mark actually meant “owned.”
An adult Helena seems to have certain dreams or symbolic visions that warn her of Jacob’s presence … but these “visions” could also be literal memories, too.
Helena and her husband, Stephen, have an affectionate relationship. The two occasionally kiss and hug, and Stephen insists that Helena go to a work gathering because “you’re my beautiful wife, and I want to show you off.”
Helena removes her sweater and her pants to show Stephen the tattoos her father gave her. (We naturally see part of Helena’s legs.) She swims in a lake in a short nightgown.
Several people are shot, often lethally. One man is shot in the throat, and blood streams out of the man’s mouth. Someone is shot a few times in the head (we see one bullet hole). A bullet penetrates someone’s abdomen, and blood burbles up from the wound. Another character gets shot in the leg. Jacob pummels a prison guard before shooting him in the head; from far away, we see the flash of a gun’s muzzle a couple more times—presumably polishing off the other guard attending to Jacob.
Bullets cause collateral damage, too: When one of them shatters a boat oar, shrapnel carves a bloody swathe on someone’s face. A character forces another person’s face underwater. Someone’s thrown into a deep shaft (but escapes serious injury). People tumble down a very steep slope.
We see a flashback of a car exploding and hear that two people died in the blaze. Pictures of the charred remains of one are seen, focusing on the man’s skull. A rabbit carcass is discovered in a trap, its head seriously bloodied. As a child, Helena finds a disembodied paw in another trap: Jacob explains that the animal chewed its own leg to survive. Animals are shot and killed off camera.
We watch as Jacob tattoos his little girl (who shows no sign of pain). We hear that Jacob lost a few teeth when he was fleeing an angry moose … and ran into a tree. We hear that Helena’s mother died by suicide.
Two s-words and one use of the word “h—.” God’s name is misused three times, and Jesus’ name is abused twice.
We see wine at a shindig.
Helena spent the better part of two decades concealing her past, even from those closest to her. She conceals some of her tattoos behind makeup, and she says she got others when she lived in San Francisco.
We can be raised in ways that other people think might be a little crazy. Sometimes, those differences can be completely innocent and even quite positive. “You were homeschooled?” a college friend might gasp. “You actually sang songs around the piano?” another might marvel. But sometimes, how we’re raised can leave scars—deep ones. And we don’t even know we have them until much, much later.
The Marsh King’s Daughter takes that curious tension and amplifies it to a ridiculous degree. And when the film moves past its fairly boilerplate thriller formula and dives into Helena’s struggle to separate how she felt about her childhood from what she learned about it later, that’s when it’s most poignant. “I have trouble trusting people,” Helena admits, “because everyone tells me the person I believed in the most was really a monster.”
But that deeper theme rarely impacts this rather predictable thriller. It’s fairly restrained by R-rated standards: You won’t find any gratuitous nudity. The use of profanity is sparse. The Marsh King’s Daughter gets its R for its violence—which indeed can be bloody and jarring. But even that isn’t as relentless as you might expect. The film gets far more mileage from its creeping sense of suspense than sliced arteries.
That may qualify as welcome news for those inclined to see this film. But it’s probably best to think about the actual marsh in The Marsh King’s Daughter: It may look pretty nice from a distance, but you’ll always have some muck to wade through.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
