Eileen Movie: Thomasin McKenzie & Anne Hathaway Star In Film

If you’re a thriller lover, one of the year’s most exciting releases is arriving this week: Eileen, which follows on the heels of films like Saltburn and Anatomy of a Fall is a psychological thriller led by Thomasin McKenzie (Last Night In Soho).

She plays the titular Eileen Dunlop, a young staff member of a prison in New England. A new counsellor (played by Anne Hathaway) with a glamorous demeanour and a captivating personality arrives, and Eileen can’t help but be drawn to her. But this new relationship threatens to cause dire consequences for her.

What is Eileen about?

Eileen debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and then at the BFI Film Festival, and was particularly praised by critics for the lead performances.

Adapting the 2015 book of the same name by author Ottessa Moshfegh, the film begins in Massachusetts, New England in the 1960s. Eileen is a mostly bored prison worker, trying to keep herself entertained in the dull grey routine of prison life and cold miserable weather. Her role as a secretary isn’t particularly demanding or dangerous, but she takes an aloof interest in the inmates, often spying on them when no one else is looking. This mundanity is broken out of the blue by the arrival of a new addition to the prison: counsellor Rebecca St John (Hathaway).

The magnetic psychiatrist throws out much of the strict protocol and rules by inviting Eileen out to dance and drink, and the two begin to bond. Our quiet and shy main character starts to undergo a personality transformation, growing more confident and vibrant under Rebecca’s influence, but things start to get dangerous when the counsellor asks her to help on a case.

Both take an interest in a certain inmate (Sam Nivola) who’s in for murder and the unprofessional methods of Rebecca set both women on a collision course. The film becomes a twisting, gripping thriller that looks to be one of 2023’s boldest.

Who else stars?

Also in the cast are Shea Whigham (Broadwalk Empire), who plays Eileen’s alcoholic father Jim, Marin Ireland (The Dark and the Wicked) as Rita, Owen Teague (The Stand) as Randy, Jefferson White (Yellowstone) as Buck, and Tonye Patano (Weeds) as Mrs. Stevens. Eileen is directed by William Oldroyd, who directed the Florence Pugh film Lady Macbeth.