Warning: Spoilers for The Marsh King’s Daughter.

The Marsh King’s Daughter is a new dramatic thriller from director Neil Burger. The film follows Helena (Daisy Ridley), who has spent the past 20 years trying to rebuild her life after her father, Jacob (Ben Mendelsohn), was captured and sent to prison. Having kidnapped Helena’s mother (Caren Pistorius) two years before Helena was born, Jacob hid them away in the wilderness, completely secluded from the outside world. Raising Helena to understand the wilderness and marsh around her, she grew up loving her father, completely unaware of what he did to her mother.

Only after a man accidentally stumbles upon their cabin are Helena and her mother able to escape despite Helena’s objections. Once she and her mother are able to flee, they wind up at a local police station, where Helena learns the truth about what her father did. While there, Jacob tries to take Helena away before the cops intercept his efforts and arrest him. Years later, Helena has a husband and daughter who know nothing about her nefarious father or her complicated past. After Jacob escapes during a prison transfer, the FBI engulfs Helena’s home and ultimately reveals the secret she’s been keeping from her family. Therein lies the real catalyst for the film.

Helena’s Father Returns
The Marsh King’s Daughter Release Date November 3, 2023 Director Neil Burger Cast Daisy Ridley, Ben Mendelsohn, Brooklynn Prince, Gil Birmingham, Caren Pistorius, Garrett Hedlund Rating R Main Genre Crime
After escaping during a prisoner transfer, Jacob fakes his own death by removing his three distinctive gold teeth, putting them on a fellow escaped comrade, and setting their getaway car on fire. While such a plan clearly won’t pass a forensic exam, he’s able to throw off authorities temporarily and allow himself enough time to enact his plan for him, Helena, and his granddaughter Marigold (Joey Carson) to escape to Canada. Despite what the police believe, Helena remains hesitant about the news of her father’s death, and when she discovers the same kind of stick figures she had as a child inside Marigold’s habitat box for school, she quickly realizes Jacob is not only alive, but he was inside her home.

Realizing she’s the only one who can protect her family from her father, she ensures her daughter is safe at school and tells her husband, Stephen (Garrett Hedlund), to pick up Marigold without detailing why. She tells Stephen that he and Marigold rescued her before setting off for the secluded cabin where she lived as a child. After her daunting journey, she encounters her father at the cabin. They take a walk and rehash the past before Jacob asks her to bring Marigold with him to Canada. However, she quickly says she can do no such thing and parts ways with her father.

Helena returns to the cabin without her father but surprisingly encounters her stepfather, Clark (Gil Birmingham), who is also a local cop. Stephen called him after Helena left, explaining how worried he was, which prompted Clark to venture to the cabin, believing Helena and Jacob might be there. Clark asks if Jacob is there, and as she confirms he is, Jacob pulls a gun on Clark, and the two exchange gunfire. Jacob shoots Clark in the chest, killing him. As Helena grieves over Clark’s body, Jacob takes away Clark’s gun as well as Helena’s knife. He then throws her in the same pit he used to put her in as a child and leaves her there, vowing to return with Marigold so the three of them can all be a family.

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Helena Fights Back

No longer a child, Helena manages to shimmy her way up and out of the hole. Remembering her childhood rifle is locked away in the floor of the shed outside, she retrieves it and proceeds to find her father. Tracking him through the woods, using the skills he taught her, she eventually finds him canoeing down the river. She steadies herself to shoot him but misses, which allows him to escape deeper into the trees and the marsh. She begins to follow his trail but realizes he obviously knows what he taught her and might seek to escape by countering what she learned from him. She then pivots and makes her way into the marsh, where he likely fled.

Hiding in the marsh below the water, she unknowingly passes over him before he emerges and shoots her in the leg. He then handcuffs her and forces her to walk back with him to the canoe she used to get to the cabin so he can escape. While walking, they exchange words. Despite what Jacob says, Helena proclaims her mother was actually the strong one because she stayed to protect Helena when she could have run the whole time. She calls her father weak for what he did to them, which prompts him to ask her what she would do for Marigold. Responding she would die for her child, Helena then purposefully slips off the cliff’s edge, barely catching herself.

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Pretending to beg for her father’s help, he leans down. When he does, she wraps her handcuffed wrists around him and thrusts the two of them down into the creek below. To protect her daughter, she would end her own life if it meant her father was dead as well. Both groggy and in pain from the extreme tumble, they’re slow to move toward the guns that have fallen away from Jacob’s possession. As Helena reaches for one, her father reaches for the other, seemingly pointing at each other simultaneously. Helena manages to shoot first after saying she must protect her family and kills Jacob once and for all. Using the skills he taught her as a child, Helena ultimately defeats her father as an adult. Finally feeling a sense of relief after the entire ordeal, she makes her way back home to her family.

The Marsh King’s Daughter is in theaters now.