Marin Ireland

In Eileen (2023), Marin Ireland plays Mrs Polk with a flatness that makes the scene frightening. William Oldroyd gives her one long scene, and she makes it count without turning it into a display. We sat up, unsettled by the lack of emphasis where we might have expected an actor to insist on every word. The film changes direction less successfully, then stops before it seems ready to end.

The small early film parts include the Upset Visitor in Side Effects (2013), before Glass Chin (2014) and Hell or High Water (2016) brought greater notice. She became a series regular in Sneaky Pete (2015–2019), then took a leading role in The Dark and the Wicked (2020). That film marked a shift towards more prominent work in independent horror. The work suits her ability to make distress feel like something a character has endured for a while.

In Rob Savage's The Boogeyman (2023), her Rita Billings seems not to have slept for a year. Ireland makes exhaustion something more troubling than a request for sympathy. The film frightens properly when the lights are low, then loses confidence when they come up, leaving the actors to sustain more interest than the script supplies. Sophie Thatcher is the reason it holds together; Ireland's contribution is smaller, but her Rita makes the distress feel lived with rather than put on for a scene.

Those performances are not a reason to recommend everything with her name in the credits. She plays Violet in Celine Song's Materialists (2025), a clever, well-cast film whose coldness leaves its appeals to feeling unearned. Our reservation concerns the film; there is no reason to make a supporting actor answer for the whole script. For Ireland, try Eileen, with fair warning that the film is less satisfying than her contribution.