NEON Picks Up William Oldroyd’s ‘Eileen’

I saw William Oldroyd’s “Eileen” at this past January’s Sundance Film Festival. Although it felt slight at the time, but nevertheless intriguing, it’s stayed with me in the months since.

NEON today acquired the rights to Oldroyd’s film, which means it’s in very good hands.

The film, an adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh‘s 2015 novel, has an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes and 75 on Metacritic. The screenplay was actually written by Moshfegh herself with the aide of her husband Luke Goebel

“Eileen” stars Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie and revolves around a woman's friendship with a new co-worker at the prison facility where she works. Then things takes a turn for the sinister. The less you know about this one the better.

Oldroyd's follow-up to his 2017 debut “Lady Macbeth” plays like a Patricia Highsmith novel. It’s calm, cool and absolutely nasty in the way it plays out. I’m looking forward to watching this one again. There’s a lot of hidden gestures, words and manipulations that are missed the first time around.

I was won over with “Lady Macbeth” when I saw it at TIFF back in 2017, so much so that I decided to interview him that fall. I was also correct in my assessment that we need to “get ready for star-in-the-making Florence Pugh.” It’s just a very undervalued film and Oldroyd’s latest has just climbed up on my fall must-see list. I didn’t even know it was shot.

In my Lady Macbeth review, I wrote:

“Oldroyd has reinvented the genre by injecting a much needed dosage of adrenaline. “Lady Macbeth” is a thriller masquerading as a period piece The critics were unanimous in their praise and Roadside quickly snatched it up not too long after. You’re in for a real treat.”