"Eileen" is the anti-"Saltburn"

Anne Hathaway and Thomasin Mackenzie are thrillingly unpredictable in period neo-noir.

I try to judge every movie on its own terms, and not compare one to another. But, boy, watching William Oldroyd’s masterfully unsettling “Eileen” really underscored for me why “Saltburn” left me so cold.

Both movies are about powerless characters who become obsessed with another person, and how that obsession leads to both their ruin and their salvation. But Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” was so overwhelmed with flashy filmmaking techniques, glittering surfaces and meme-worthy “shocking” moments that style suffocated the emotions churning underneath.

“Eileen,” in contrast, takes place in a drab landscape of dingy bars, dusty kitchens and gray government offices (I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much institutional tile in one movie before.) But the placid exteriors only highlight the dark, wild emotions within, much like when the shy, mousy Eileen (Thomasin Mackenzie of “Leave No Trace”) smiles, and reveals a row of discolored, rotting teeth.

Eileen lives in a small Massachusetts town in the 1960s, working at a juvenile prison during the day and caring for her alcoholic ex-police chief father (the excellent Shea Whigham) at night. It’s a lonely existence that she sleepwalks through, her only vice the candy bars she keeps under her bed. She has to keep the windows of her broken-down car open, even in the dead of winter, because smoke from the engine will fill the compartment otherwise. Sometimes she fantasizes about rolling the windows up and escaping her life once and for all.

Her sad routine is disrupted by the presence of Rebecca (Anne Hathaway), the new psychologist at the prison. With her coiffed blonde hair and tailored red suits, Rebecca is like a movie star who has stepped off the screen, and Hathaway plays her with an almost otherworldly air. Eileen can’t stop staring at her. And then Rebecca stares back.

Eileen is thrilled when Rebecca seems to want to start a friendship, or maybe more. Their scenes together are riveting, such as when Rebecca takes Eileen dancing, and McKenzie expertly shows the life blossoming in Eileen’s cheeks. She’s infatuated, but she’s also happy just to be noticed by someone, to be reminded that she does exist. “You’re in a good mood,” her father spits when she comes home late one night, beaming. “What’s wrong with you?”

But surrounding the warmth of Eileen and Rebecca’s connection is darkness and dread. The two women work in a prison that’s a cauldron of angry young men, and both become fascinated with one teenage inmate who stabbed his father while he slept. Eileen’s father’s drunken benders have become increasingly more dangerous, as he waves his old police revolver around the neighborhood. And Eileen is so transformed by Rebecca’s attention that we wonder what she might do if that were threatened.

When violence comes, it’s from a place I did not expect. “Eileen,” adapted from the novel by Ottessa Moshfegh by Eric Soebel, turns into a very different movie in the third act while still remaining true to its characters. Oldroyd also made 2016’s “Lady Macbeth,” featuring an early performance by Florence Pugh as another cloistered young woman who goes to unexpected and ferocious lengths for love.

While it has elements of a noir thriller, the movie is more of a nervy, unpredictable character study, as Eileen keeps surprising us. For better or worse, Rebecca’s presence has freed her from the emotional prison she’s been in her entire life. And she’s never going back inside.

“Eileen” is now in movie theaters.