'Eileen' Isn’t Weird Enough

Ottessa Moshfegh’s writing is notable for its resolute prickliness. She favors narrators who stridently hate everyone around them and notice other people’s foibles with vicious acuity. She has a penchant for describing bodily functions in extreme and exacting detail and is an expert in creating an aura of pervading menace. You will find all of these things in her 2015 novel Eileen, but the new movie adaptation of the book — despite being co-written by the author and her partner, Luke Goebel — is another story. The film keeps the air of menace but dispenses, unfortunately, with the other things, which were what made the novel more than just a story about a weird girl who falls in with another weirdo and ends up doing a crime.