Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) is a frustrated young woman, working a dead-end job at the juvenile detention facility and living at home with her deadbeat, alcoholic father, Jim (Shea Whigham). She retreats to fantasies, either violent or erotic, to get through her day.  When Rebecca (Anne Hathaway), the new psychologist for the prison, is brought on to the staff, the two quickly become friends.  Eileen’s fascination with the sophisticated Rebecca grows, and while it is not entirely one-sided, Rebecca is more keen on unlocking Lee Polk (Sam Nivola), one of the facility’s more infamous residents who killed his father one night while he was sleeping. 

William Oldroyd directs Eileen, a classically-minded thriller written by Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh, the latter of which adapts her own novel for the screen.  Debuting at Sundance, Neon kept the film close to the chest, running it through some of the fall festivals before embarking on a theatrical release.  At a brief 97 minutes, Oldroyd navigates Eileen’s monotonous existence with precision, and while he is not one to linger on any specific elements of Eileen’s arc, the film does not feel rushed and presents a complete, yet deeply troubling, portrait of a lonely girl. 

McKenzie is playing a deeply unlikable character in Eileen, a little crude, rude, and rough around the edges, but, as she tells Rebecca, that’s par for the course because everyone in Massachusetts is a little mad.  For all her disaffection, she still manages to barter elements of her traumatic and chaotic lifestyle with the audience to gain their sympathy.  This is not the life she chose for herself.  Rather, it is the one she was forced into after her mother died and her sister left, leaving no one to look after her drunk father who was fired from the police force for brandishing his gun openly in the streets.  It is a strange role as Eileen is a rather meek character in the context of her life, a young woman in a male-dominated environment and the least tenured of the secretaries at the detention center, she is often pushed aside to the back walls and corners until called on.  This is a great contrast to her fantasies where she spies on a young couple making out in their car or lusts over Randy (Owen Teague), a younger guard at the prison which all teases at a wilder side which she slowly begins to embrace more and more openly. 

The film is uncomfortable – as all good thrillers are – before Rebeca arrives, and afterwards, the film becomes electric; her blond hair illuminating the frame like the sun and capturing the attention of characters and audiences alike.  She is new and exciting, and as she stands in the middle of these smoke-filled rooms with dark leather furniture, all eyes are on her, and Hathaway perfectly manipulates Ari Wegner’s lens.  As an outsider, she gets to bring a new and seductive flavor to the film that is always alluring, yet surprisingly, never dangerous.  Instead of presenting as a threat, we end up feeling worried about her as she grows closer to Elieen who embraces any opportunity to emulate her; returning to the bar and finishing Rebecca’s cigarette and martini, for example. There is an effortless quality to the performance that, while she is captivating, there is no sense that she is hiding anything from us, at least not for long, which makes her ultimate betrayal of Eileen – admittedly, a harsh word here – sting all the more.  

While the film never slows down, after a night of dancing, kissing, and mixed signals, Rebecca takes a sudden vacation from work deflating the newfound confidence of Elieen and stalling out the energy of the film which that wild night had so expertly built.  Eileen goes through, what can only be called a withdrawal, having flirted with Rebecca long into the night and embracing a part of herself that she may have never realized was there. With about twenty minutes remaining, Rebecca calls to Eileen inviting her over to her house for Christmas Eve dinner, and as the reunion draws to a disastrous close, with a single line, Hathaway’s Rebecca, effusing all the icy coolness of a noir’s femme fatale, revitalizes the film in a shocking way.  Mrs. Polk (Marin Ireland) is tied up in the basement.  Because the film has been punctuated by Eileen’s fantasies throughout in moments that flash by yet are still totally legible thanks to Nick Emerson’s precise editing, it is not clear in the immediacy if this is really happening, but unlike the previous outbursts, this ominous line is the truth. 

Sure enough, the two women descend into the basement where poor Mrs. Polk is tied to a support beam and gagged. For all the discomfort and intrigue that both Hathaway and McKenzie brought to their roles, they both step aside and give Ireland the room to deliver a showstopping monologue about what drove her son to kill his father. It is brutal and painful, perhaps a touch melodramatic, but Ireland treats the text with devastating gravity as she reveals Lee’s secret and defends her own complicity. The biggest hurdle for this scene is how to continue afterward, and while the shocking pull of a trigger is one way to pivot from the drama, it does feel rather conventional to an otherwise unconventionally dangerous story. That the emotionally tragic conclusion lands at all, especially after Mrs. Polk’s confession, is a testament to McKenzie’s work in that floundering middle act to really lure us into her loneliness and find empathy to show towards her character.

Eileen is a beguiling little piece that is difficult to recommend but highly entertaining for those looking for a thorny experience. Peppered with some really biting, dark humor, Oldroyd still brings a bitter bleakness to the screen as he chronicles Eileen’s lonely existence and McKenzie perfectly wields that brash nature as a defense mechanism for the young woman. Further supported by great production design from Craig Lathrop, Eileen feels like a picture that was exhumed from the vault featuring some intense performances that instantly draw audiences into the cold, harsh world which is being represented and making it the perfect case that small scale, small scope cinema absolutely has a necessary place in the current theatrical ecosystem. It may not be crowned a Box Office superstar or go on to have the lasting legacy of Rob Reiner’s Misery (1990), but it is nevertheless a radiant piece that never once feels like it was developed for the small screen.