Eileen

There is a specific kind of cold that only exists in 1960s New England—a damp, bone-deep chill that feels less like weather and more like a moral judgment. In Eileen, the air is so thick with cigarette smoke and repressed longing that you can practically feel the grit on your own teeth. It’s a film that starts as a drab character study of a miserable young woman and ends as something much more jagged and dangerous, leaving you wondering how on earth you drifted so far from shore without noticing the tide.

I watched this on a Tuesday evening while wearing a pair of incredibly itchy wool socks, and honestly, the physical discomfort only added to the experience. Eileen is not a "comfortable" movie. It’s a prickly, strange, and ultimately polarizing piece of contemporary cinema that feels like it was unearthed from a time capsule, despite being released just last year.

A Study in Beige and Bourbon

At the center of this frostbitten noir is Eileen Dunlop, played with a haunting, mousey intensity by Thomasin McKenzie. You might know her from the neon-soaked fever dream of Last Night in Soho or the heartbreaking Leave No Trace, but here she’s doing something entirely different. Eileen is a girl who exists in the periphery of her own life. She works a soul-crushing job as a secretary at a boys' prison and goes home to a house that smells of stale gin and resentment, courtesy of her father, Jim (Shea Whigham).

Shea Whigham is one of those actors who can play "miserable drunk" with such precision it makes your own liver ache. He’s a former cop who spends his days wandering the neighborhood in a bathrobe with a loaded gun, terrorizing his daughter with psychological barbs. The dynamic is suffocating. Eileen’s only escape is her own vivid, occasionally violent fantasies—moments where she imagines shooting her father or engaging in fleeting sexual encounters. It’s a grim setup, but director William Oldroyd (who previously gave us the equally cold-blooded Lady Macbeth) keeps the pacing just brisk enough that you don’t drown in the melancholy.

The Hathaway Spark in a Gray World

Then comes Rebecca. If Eileen is a smudge of gray charcoal, Rebecca is a splash of Technicolor. Anne Hathaway enters the film like a Hitchcockian blonde who took a wrong turn at a 1950s melodrama and ended up in a gritty 70s crime flick. As the prison’s new counselor, she’s all martinis, smoky eye makeup, and Harvard-educated confidence. Anne Hathaway’s blonde wig deserves its own SAG award for the way it effortlessly signals "dangerously glamorous" in a room full of drab wool coats.

The chemistry between McKenzie and Hathaway is the engine that drives the first two-thirds of the movie. It’s a seductive, "is-this-a-romance-or-a-predation" vibe that feels like a darker cousin to Todd Haynes’s Carol. Rebecca sees something in Eileen—or claims to—and for the first time in her life, Eileen feels visible. It’s intoxicating to watch, even as your internal alarm bells start ringing. You know this isn't going to end with them driving a convertible into a sunset. This is a story written by Ottessa Moshfegh, the novelist behind My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which means the "happily ever after" was never even an option on the table.

When the Floor Drops Out

About an hour in, Eileen pulls a tonal u-turn so sharp it might give you whiplash. What started as a psychological drama about female friendship suddenly careens into the territory of a pitch-black crime thriller. I won't spoil the twist, but I will say that the ending hits you like a wet sack of flour to the face. It’s abrupt, it’s messy, and it’s deeply cynical.

This brings us to why this film is currently sitting in the "obscure" pile. Despite the star power of Anne Hathaway, Eileen grossed a measly $1.5 million against a $16 million budget. In our current era of franchise dominance, a movie this "unlikable" and tonally shifty is a hard sell for a mass audience. It doesn’t offer the easy catharsis of a typical thriller. It was dumped into a limited theatrical release before being whisked away to the digital ether, which is a shame. It’s the kind of movie that demands to be discussed over a drink—preferably something strong and neat.

Behind the scenes, the production was a bit of a labor of love for Ottessa Moshfegh and her husband, Luke Goebel, who co-wrote the screenplay. It’s rare for an author to adapt their own work and keep the "nastiness" intact, but they succeeded here. They didn't polish the edges of Eileen’s character to make her more "relatable" for a 2023 audience. She remains a creep, a dreamer, and a victim all at once.

The film also benefits from a stellar supporting turn by Marin Ireland as Mrs. Polk. She has one monologue toward the end of the film that is so chillingly delivered it makes the Massachusetts winter look like a tropical vacation. It’s a moment of raw, ugly truth that grounds the more stylized elements of the plot.

Eileen is a film for people who like their cinema with a bit of a mean streak. It’s beautifully shot, expertly acted, and carries an atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a prison shiv. While the ending might leave some viewers feeling like they’ve been pranked, I found its refusal to play nice deeply refreshing. It’s a reminder that even in an era of predictable streaming "content," movies can still be weird, prickly, and genuinely surprising. Seek this one out on a cold night, but maybe skip the itchy socks.