Eileen (2023) Review!!

Synopsis – A woman’s friendship with a new co-worker at the prison facility where she works takes a sinister turn.

My Take – Every year we all come across a particular kind of film that stars recognizable names and is well hailed by critics, but then shockingly the viewing experience turns out to be something else. The kind of bait-and-switch film that comes along but rarely sticks the landing.

This sophomore feature from director William Oldroyd, following Lady Macbeth (2016), is exactly one of those films where all the pieces were there to be something great, but they just weren’t quite assembled correctly, resulting in something quite underwhelming.

Based on author Ottessa Moshfegh‘s Man Booker Prize-shortlisted 2015 novel, who also co-wrote the screenplay with her husband Luke Goebel, the film has indeed quite a prolonged and drawn out build-up, featuring an alluring premise that mixes in an array of genres and some brilliant visual work from cinematographer Ari Wegner, but then the pay-off isn’t quite worthy of it. Meandering up until the moment and spiraling out of control.

While what transpires could have been fascinating, the film just fails because there’s no third act, as it takes a vicious twist.

Unable to decide if it’s a thriller or a dark comedy, though stars Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway give it their all, yet the clumsy and opaque screenplay just halts and falls off the metaphorical storytelling cliff. Leaving us wondering with the point behind everything. Either way, this diverting yet messy feature that could’ve been something more.

Set in the 1960s, the story follows Eileen Dunlop (Thomasin McKenzie), a young mousy secretary who works at a Massachusetts corrections facility for teenage boys. Lonely and with no friends to speak of, Eileen lives with her drunk and sickly ex-cop father (Shea Whigham) whose passive-aggressive cruelty is enough to mess with anyone’s mind. Beyond that, she’s also a victim of her circumstances.

But things change after the prison hires a new psychologist, Dr. Rebecca St. John (Anne Hathaway) and Eileen is immediately drawn to her intellectual conversation and glamorous appearance. The more Eileen observes Rebecca the more infatuated she becomes.

Soon she’s mimicking her new coworker – taking up smoking and coffee, dressing up as elegant as she can with her late mother’s clothes. In little time, Rebecca becomes the kindred spirit or role model to give Eileen’s life a little glimmer of hope, until a scenario unfolds that threatens to destroy both of them.

For a while we are under the film’s spell as it set against a world-weary bluesy score and an evocatively down-at-heel, small-minded, small-town backdrop, with Rebecca being an impossibly exciting presence. Hathaway is magnetic, purring her way around the baked-in misogyny of the potato-faced local men. But then a third-act tonal shift knocks the whole film off balance.

The film is the epitome of “throwing stuff at the wall and see what sticks” film making, and in this case it all slides to the floor. The first hour is quite intriguing as we see. At its best, the film is a sly and devious thriller with dashes of dark humor and even a tinge of Hitchcock. Eileen’s occasional fantasies of killing herself and her father persist throughout the film, shocking the audience as you wonder how dark things can possibly get.

In fact, we first meet her peeping on a couple getting frisky in a fogged-up car, then dumping a handful of snow on her crotch to cool her burning loins. It’s an undeniably flashy opening that sets the stage for lurid psychosexual antics that director Oldroyd never really delivers.

The women’s relationship is also captivating. As Eileen becomes increasingly fascinated with Rebecca and as Rebecca returns the favor, we get the sense that something is not right. And you wonder what the writers have up their sleeves and where they will push the titular character.

But that sense of anticipation is let down by a last half hour that is really quite under-cooked, bulldozing through the subtle character drama and muddying the tone. It’s a disappointing swerve towards an unsatisfying conclusion, especially unwelcome when things were just starting to get interesting.

Even the pivotal shooting scene with Eileen, Rebecca and Rita Polk (Marin Ireland) feels hasty and, to a certain extent, detracts from the film’s well-established mood of building dread. The ending is cloaked in ambiguity but not necessarily the good kind. Instead it leaves the film in a far-fetched place.

Performances wise, Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway are solid, period. McKenzie commands the audience’s attention from the opening scene with a hauntingly brilliant turn. She beautifully articulates Eileen’s desperation and the repercussions of long-standing abuse. She captures her slow-burning anger and crippling loneliness with subtlety and terrifying intensity.

While Hathaway provides a jolt of energy, seduction and danger to the proceedings. Alas, it’s not their fault that the script leaves them shorthanded for the good part. In supporting roles, Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland, Owen Teague, Tonye Patano and Jefferson White are just wasted. On the whole, ‘Eileen’ is an uneventful psychological drama that ends up being an unsatisfying and anticlimactic oddity.