Eileen Is One Of The Best Movies Of The Year And You Should Avoid Learning Anything About It [Fantastic Fest]
Allow me to engage in some sausage-making, inside baseball nonsense: I've been working in the online film press since 2009 and have spent that entire time realizing that spoilers don't bother me. As I have stumbled up the rungs of responsibility, eventually landing where I am now, as the lead (whether folks like it or not) of Slash Film Dot Com, spoilers have become a fact of life. I learn spoilers when I make phone calls to confirm or debunk stories. I learn spoilers when I work with my team to plan coverage for a new release. Learning the plot of a film, sometimes in great detail, before I see it has never hindered my enjoyment of a truly good movie. Spoilers don't matter. In the grand scheme, plot (and, therefore, spoilers) is the least important part of a movie.
And today, I'm throwing my hands up in the air and temporarily tossing this philosophy out the window.
Director William Oldroyd's "Eileen" is the rare film I've seen in the past decade where I didn't know a single thing about the story before the lights in the theater dimmed. And it's the rare film I've seen in the past decade where I exited the theater dreading the impending marketing campaign. Because distributors Neon and Focus Features are going to need to find a way to sell their new movie featuring rising star Thomasin McKenzie and established Oscar winner Anne Hathaway, a trailer is inevitable. They need this thing to make money so they can afford to take chances on future movies as good as "Eileen." I won't be mad when the trailer arrives with footage tipping its hand at what goes down in this film, but boy, I'll definitely be a little bummed out.
Please let the first paragraph of this article do the heavy lifting when I say this: "Eileen" is among the best films hitting theaters in 2023, every movie fan with a shred of taste should watch it, and you should close your eyes and cover your ears whenever a trailer starts playing in your vicinity. Seeing this film knowing nothing — truly and absolutely nothing — was among my most thrilling moviegoing experiences of the past few years.
I know this is dramatic, sorry
Okay, I know. Some of you read that and immediately ran to the Wikipedia page to learn more. Some of you may have even looked up Ottessa Moshfegh's source novel, which I intend to read before I see the film again later this year (for the film, Moshfegh adapted her own book alongside her husband, the writer Luke Goebel; I'm told it's a faithful adaptation). Heck, maybe some of you read Ben Pearson's review of the film for /Film from the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Here's a link. You can read it. It's good writing. Ben agrees with me that it's one of the best movies of the year. But for perhaps the first time ever, I'm actually going to beg you not to click on /Film link. Yes, even in this economy.
We'll surely run the trailer as a news post when it arrives, but you shouldn't click on that either. Let me just tell you that I was bowled over by "Eileen," Oldroyd's precise direction, and how he modulates tone. Let me just tell you that the film knows the appeal of Anne Hathaway, and makes better use of her than any film in her long career. Let me just tell you that Thomasin McKenzie, already a rising star who has impressed with every role, gives the kind of performance that could (should) define her as someone whose mere presence makes a movie a must-see.
There's a moment in the film — you'll know it when you see it — where the floor fell out from underneath me and I knew I'd have to write this article. So here it is.
I could talk about the genre, or the story, or the character relationships, or the score (which is so very specific that going into detail here would destroy everything I'm trying to accomplish by being so vague). But I won't. Instead, I'll end as vaguely as I can. Pencil in December 1, 2023 for the film's limited release. Pencil in December 8, 2023 for its wide release. I want to hear people's reactions to this one. And I hope they can experience it in the same way I did.