"Eileen" - Film Review
At first blush, Eileen’s titular character (Thomasin McKenzie) is desperate for a rush of some kind, any kind. She’s the sort of character who’s all too familiar in the psychological thriller genre. Eileen is meek, mild, and doesn’t have a life of her own. She works at the local juvenile detention hall as a secretary and returns home every day with two bottles of liquor for her father (Shea Whigham). He was once the police chief of their small Massachusetts town, but now he spends his time berating everything Eileen does. Her mundane life is jolted with electricity in the form of the new psychiatrist (Anne Hathaway) at the juvenile hall. Almost immediately, Eileen is swept up by the confident charm of Rebecca Saint John, and Eileen’s humdrum life will never be the same again.
Eileen quickly creates a dichotomy between its main characters. Eileen does nothing but daydream about a life that’s different from her own; one that’s filled with sex, murder, and revenge. The daydreaming is what keeps the simmering rage at bay. Rebecca, while having drinks at a bar with Eileen early on, waxes poetically about how this town and its people are so real. It’s not what she’s used to, being from the desert. Eileen has positioned its two leading female characters on opposite ends of a spectrum. In that sense, it’s compelling to watch the ideals of these two women change as their influence grows on each other. At the same time, the relationship between Eileen and Rebecca feels a bit sloppily thrown together. It’s as though someone watched Carol, half-heartedly wanted to recreate the love story, and decided that the gun should have actually gone off.
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Eileen feels as though it’s treading water. Over and over again, the audience is reminded that Eileen is boring and lame, just going wherever the current takes her, with no agency of her own. We know this. We’re told this repeatedly by characters, but it’s also in the tacit elements of the film. It’s in Eileen’s drab wardrobe, the inherent melancholy gray of Massachuesetts, and the repetitive nature of her life. And yet that makes up the bulk of the film’s middle section. Maybe it works as intended, because the final thirty minutes provide one of the sharpest left turns in recent memory. Unfortunately, this violent left turn sends the already shaky Eileen completely off the rails, with no chance of recovery.
Hathaway is the film’s saving grace. There’s something intriguing about her Rebecca, a femme fatale of sorts whose cards are never fully on the table. Even with her energetic performance, the character feels under-realized. McKenzie has played the wide-eyed loner before, and she does it well here, but there’s a sense that there’s more to be unpacked in the character of Eileen. That’s sort of the overwhelming theme that Eileen leaves the viewer with. This desire for more which, perhaps ironically, is what Eileen craves in the beginning of the film. There are many pieces of the puzzle that fit, like the score, noir lighting, and Hitchockian ambiance. All elements that hint at something ultimately more than Eileen provides. Rarely is the desire for a film to be longer the sentiment in my reviews, but Eileen needs ten more minutes to let itself breathe. Not to mention, extra time was needed to alleviate the sheer absurd abruptness of the ending. Eileen is a psychological thriller that proves to be all smoke and mirrors.
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