10. Sean Durkin
Before I went in to watch Durkin's 2011 film Martha Marcy May Marlene, I was most looking forward to Elizabeth Olsen, the Olsen twins' younger sister, and her acting performance. I'm very happy to say that she did an excellent job separating herself from the twins in her own right - she's incredible. After I watched the film, however, I was most intrigued by Durkin's handling of the subject matter. As a bold and fresh director, Durkin doesn't really hold back in dismantling his protagonist's psyche. Olsen plays a young girl, formally named Martha, whose fleeing of the isolated cult that she voluntarily joined proves to have severe, psychological ramifications once reunited with her sister. Durkin shows us how easy it was for Martha's persona to be broken down bit by bit and how scary it is to find any kind of sense of it in the fragmented pieces. Martha's paranoia outside of the cult is quiet at first, just bubbling under the surface, with odd but understandable quirks of a damaged person. Then you find out more and more about this group of seemingly normal individuals that Martha ran away from, and in the process Durkin gives these crazy scenes that destabilize the notion of normalcy altogether. You don't see any of the most shocking moments coming because of how well Durkin's been slyly revealing the characters' nature, little by little. Martha Marcy May Marlene is a downright suspenseful drama, but it's set Durkin up well to go in a more extreme direction.