Anne Hathaway bewitches in a slow-burn thriller about an unlikely friendship that ignites between two prison workers and threatens to destroy them both. Ottessa Moshfegh’s acclaimed 2015 novel becomes a slippery devil of a film, one whose modern sensibility and female focus fuses with Hitchcockian stylings and an askew, Samuel Fuller-like spin on noir.

Viewed through a grainy, retro lens, the film tells the story of Eileen Dunlop (Jojo Rabbit’s Thomasin McKenzie), a secretary at a New England juvenile detention facility in the 60s. Drained by the demands of her alcoholic, former police-chief father (Shea Whigham), Eileen fixates on Hathaway’s glamorous, convention-flouting counsellor Rebecca when she arrives in her life. Unfortunately, Rebecca bears all the hallmarks of a classic femme fatale as she draws her young co-worker into drinking and danger.

Scripted by Moshfegh in collaboration with husband Luke Goebel, this is the second feature from Lady Macbeth director William Oldroyd, and shares that film’s doom-laden atmosphere, though leavened by dashes of well-employed humour. Bringing a smattering of Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling to her portrayal, McKenzie excels as a dowdy, faintly disturbed smalltown girl who senses an opportunity for escape. Alongside blonde bombshell Hathaway, they make an invigorating odd couple. 

Eileen is in cinemas from Friday 1 December.