Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie Turn in a Truly Nasty Piece of Work with Eileen

As wisps of smoke join together in the interior of an overheating car, Eileen’s opening title announces itself as a sonic and visual jump scare. Brusque and brightly colored, the font is carnivalesque, inviting the audience into an obviously twisted ride that relishes its own nastiness. Moments later, Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) arrives, seated in the same car in a different time and place: A local Massachusetts beachfront makeout spot, where she is a lone voyeur to couples hooking up in their own vehicles. Just as things are getting hot and heavy, Eileen opens her car door to scoop up a handful of dirty snow and shove it into her pants. Gross, uncomfortable, hot. Welcome to Eileen.
Director William Oldroyd’s (Lady Macbeth) adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s 1960s-set novel is a short, sharp, life-changing chapter in the seemingly dead-end day-to-day of 24-year-old Eileen. She’s a desperately lonely woman whose alcoholic ex-cop father (Shea Whigham) emotionally abuses her, and whose supervisors at the boys’ correctional facility where she works as a secretary and glorified janitor make pointed barbs about her uselessness. Behind her unassuming gaze, she indulges in anything that will make her heart beat faster: Murder-suicide daydreams about her father, masturbatory fantasies of rough public sex with the handsome young correctional officer (Owen Teague), a compulsive consumption and regurgitation of more sugar and candy than any person could reasonably stand.
When a sporty red car zooms through her periphery just as she’s taking out the prison trash, it seems that this disruption to director of photography Ari Wegner’s (an established star with Zola, The Power of the Dog and Lady Macbeth) frosty Northeastern color palette could be just another one of Eileen’s escapisms. In a way the car’s owner Carol—I mean, the prison’s new Harvard-trained, bottle-blonde counselor Rebecca (a delightfully intense and coy Anne Hathaway) is Eileen’s greatest fantasy come to life. Stylish, smart and attentive to Eileen in a way that no one else is, she picks up on the secretary’s need for recognition immediately. At the prison’s annual Christmas pageant, a contemptuous tradition of degradation in the name of Jesus Christ and reformed society, Eileen can’t take her eyes off of Rebecca, even as a guard beats one of the young men for his heckling, instigating a larger fight and lockdown.