Movie Review: Eileen

Eileen Dunlop, played by Thomasin McKenzie is a 20-something woman who lives in Massachusetts in the 1960s and represents millions of poor and lower middle-class people who because of their parents and where they were born, have minimal options for a happy life. Some people can break free from a life like this, but most are never able to achieve anything better than the cards they were dealt at birth.

The main character of the new movie “Eileen” lives on a depressing rundown street, somewhere in Massachusetts with her father who is a major drunk and her mother who has recently died. Eileen is a secretary and errand runner at a local prison for boys and for good reasons, hates her father. From the beginning, everything about this film is dark and depressing almost as if every scene was shot at night or while it was raining. The first third of this movie is all about Eileen’s depressing life with her retired police officer father and her job, making sitting through the first 30 minutes rather tedious.

There is a term in movie making known as a “fantasy sequence”. This movie has no less than 2 sick fantasy sequences, that are inserted for reasons that could only be to shock the audience. After Eileen is told by the police to hide her father’s gun, there is a sudden, unnecessary, and horrific scene, where she takes the gun, puts it under her chin, and then fires. There is nothing before this horrible scene that could ever be considered a logical set-up. There is another scene where Eileen takes the same gun and stands behind her father and shoots him in the back of the head. Why are these scenes in this movie, other than to perhaps wake up the audience, who by now is sound asleep?

A new story begins with the arrival of a Ph.D. from Harvard, Rebecca played by Anne Hathaway who soon befriends Eileen, and soon after it looks like this friendship could be turning into more.

At the 75% point of this movie, which has at best turned out to be a very boring experience, everything turns into a different, disgusting, and insane new direction when Rebecca calls Eileen to her house for some drinks. For me, this crazy climax, which includes scenes with the mother of one of the boys in the person who was accused of murder is where the entire story falls apart – wrecking any chance of a recommendation, despite the good acting.

Very recently Ann Hathaway appeared on the Jimmy Fallon show to plug Eileen and when it was time for her to talk about this film, all they talked about was one scene where her character makes this primal scream while having drinks with Eileen. There is no mention of the story or any part of this film other than having the Tonight Show audience trying to primal scream like Hathaway in this movie. I thought this was a telltale sign showing how bad and strange this movie is and how it ended. This now makes two low budget art movies that Hathway has appeared in recently, the last one “She Came to Me”, is also extremely strange with a bad story. Its one thing to want to appear in many different types of movies to challenge your skills as an actor, its another thing to actually read the script first.

The insane high ratings on Rotten Tomatoes of 85% make zero sense, because this film has no plausible third act and is too crazy to even be called a movie. My rating is 40% only for some of the acting and a solid pass for this one.