Critics reviews

Eileen delights in toying with the tropes of noir. Oldroyd has made a film about the chilliness of New England... but central to the film’s effectiveness is how it slowly, steadily, alluringly heats up, drawing the audience into its spell

Commuting its way around wintry Boston in the 1960s, this teasing, wrong-footing semi-thriller... inches towards the crux of a crime, and then leaves the ramifications dangling... It's frustrating to watch a faintly sagging tale snap to attention and then promptly abandon us at the very moment it gets most interesting.

The film lives and dies by the electric connection between Eileen and Rebecca... Hathaway nails Rebecca’s toxic appeal... But McKenzie, a young actress of wonderful openness, is miscast as Eileen and the film suffers for it. She never captures the grossness and bitterness that came across on the page. Unable to channel her caustic edge, she makes her pitiful – more bland than biting.

“Eileen” is not the film one might expect after its first act. I don’t think this is a problem. Oldroyd and his collaborators are playing with expectations in a way that reflects the themes of their entire production.

[A] neat, assertive film... Oldroyd keeps the narrative punchy: he gives us glimpses into Eileen’s interiority, then subverts this creepy humour through an expertly timed tonal switch that takes this from eerie, obsessive romantic drama to violent thriller.

Eileen is quick enough on its feet that there’s more pleasure than impatience to watching it spin its web somewhere in the direction of the obvious... What Eileen has to reveal is — not much. The real attraction is the getting there.

Eileen is lacking in a considered formal approach but strives to make up for this misgiving with a script that offers its talented ensemble an unexpected mix of sensual longing and perverse thrills. While this clash of tones doesn’t entirely gel, part of its appeal is the shock of such contrasts.

[A] brazen genre-bender... [the film] might prove an off-putting cocktail in some quarters, but the weirdos among us will find “Eileen’s” sheer chutzpah, couched as it is in classy, clever filmmaking, curiously exhilarating and addictive.

[Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway] give career-best performances in an oddly touching queer almost-romance that feels like a cross between “Carol” and Hitchcock. But it’s also entirely its own weird, beautiful thing,

A strange and spellbinding psychological thriller... Rippling with sly humor and a bold command of the tropes of classic Hitchcockian suspense, this is a twisty and beguiling original, led by contrasting but expertly synced performances from Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway.

From impressive visual storytelling to its evocation of the 1960s, taut plotting and its central performances, [Eileen] runs through its psychological thriller beats with dark humour and style

It feels like a tragedy when “Eileen” doesn’t live up to the initial contract it draws up with its audience... [The script] does have all these promising elements, to be clear. But it connects the dots between them so hurriedly that “Eileen” leaves one wondering whether there was supposed to be an additional 20 minutes to the movie somewhere that someone accidentally deleted.