Eileen

McKenzie begins to flex even more of her extremely well-honed actorly chops, Hathaway shows us that her ice-cold-blonde exterior houses an even chillier soul.

Hathaway is magnetic, purring her way around the baked-in misogyny of the potato-faced local men. But then a third-act tonal shift knocks the whole film off balance.

Based on the 2015 novel of the same name by Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen is a moody, morbidly ghoulish maze of a movie that evokes the best Hitchcockian suspense thrillers.

Anne Hathaway brightens this limp genre exercise that mistakenly prioritises B-movie thrills over more nuanced character interplay.

Ms. Hathaway executes this double act with verve, evidently relishing her character’s quick, literate intelligence and martini-sipping style.

Eileen is tethered tightly to a novel: Moshfegh’s own source material, which she adapts with co-scriptwriter husband Luke Goebel. Predictably, the pair are nothing if not faithful to the book, lending this Eileen its murky, circling intrigue.

Oldroyd’s previous film, Lady Macbeth, starring Florence Pugh, was another tale of an oppressed woman breaking out, but where that movie was riveting, this is merely watchable.

Hathaway and McKenzie make sweet music together throughout, even when it’s as discordant as Richard Reed Parry’s shrieking jazz score.

A thriller with several big twists.

Director William Oldroyd ("Lady Macbeth") conjures the period and place atmosphere with authentic gray, chilly detail, but characterization and motivation have been stripped too far down in Luke Goebel’s adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh's novel