Thomasin McKenzie in the movie Eileen. Photo: Jeong Park
It's always a mystery to me which movies get a run at the cinemas before they get snapped up by the streaming services, and which ones go straight to Netflix or whatever.
Obviously, a theatrical release is no guarantee of quality. But you can understand why a low-budget horror film would work better in a crowded, screaming theatre than on your phone.
Dramas are more of a gamble at cinemas though, even one with the apparent pedigree of Eileen.
It features New Zealand star-on-the-rise Thomasin McKenzie, opposite another quality act, Anne Hathaway.
Director William Oldroyd's Lady Macbeth launched Florence Pugh to stardom. And Eileen is based on a novel that was shortlisted for a Booker Prize.
But Netflix it is, despite some festival successes in America last year.
Eileen (McKenzie) works at a juvenile prison in early 1960s, upstate New England. She feels trapped there, partly because she has to look after her invalid alcoholic father - played by another interesting actor, Shea Wigham.
One day, something happens. The prison replacement psychiatrist arrives - flash red car, blonde hair, chain-smoking, as impossibly glamorous as her name: Doctor Rebecca St John.
It's Hathaway in full femme-fatale mode.
Eileen is smitten - especially when, against all odds, Rebecca actually notices her.
In a prison full of loser inmates and contemptuous workmates, Rebecca clearly thinks Eileen is worth cultivating.
But first Eileen has to get out of a prison of her own - the tyranny of life with her awful father. He'd been forced into retirement from the police force because of his drinking. Now he takes it out on the daughter forced to look after him.
Eileen and Rebecca become fascinated - for different reasons - by a prisoner called Lee Polk, a kid who shot his own father, also a policeman.
Rebecca seems to be just as interested in Eileen, inviting her to dance at the local bar. For a rural community in 1962, this is the height of decadent sophistication.
You don't need to be Patricia Highsmith to suspect that Rebecca may be luring the naïve, lonely Eileen down a primrose path to who knows where.
Eileen is clearly standard film noir territory, which doesn't bode well for anyone who crosses the path of the two women - or, indeed, for either of them.
It's dark, it's dangerous, it's bleak and it's heading into unknown territory, without the security of the original novel's framing device some 50 years later.
It's a bold, if not totally successful, twist on a classic noir story. But it's made more interesting as the next step in the career of its star McKenzie.
After some terrific performances in cult movies - Jojo Rabbit, Last Night in Soho, Leave No Trace (her best to date) as well as starring in the TV version of a favourite novel Life after Life - McKenzie is long overdue for actual Anya Taylor-Joy-level stardom.
I suspect she now needs a comedy, preferably a romantic one, and possibly a role that requires her to speak louder than her usual whisper.
Actually, if she needs a good role model, she could do a lot worse than the woman standing next to her. Hathaway has done it all over the years - including playing Richard Nixon once at the Oscars.
She's an object lesson that the cheapest and most effective special effect in movies is a talented actor. Eileen certainly benefits from two of them.
