Samara Weaving Is More Than the World’s Best Margot Robbie Lookalike

Samara Weaving and Margot Robbie were born two years apart in Australia, and both got their start on soap operas in their home country. You may have noticed that, from certain angles, they look a bit alike; certainly the filmmakers behind the 2022 film Babylon did, casting Weaving as an actress who is upstaged, appropriately enough, by an upstart – played by Robbie. There is further meta dimension in this scene that echoes across the two actresses’ careers in both directions: Backwards, recalling how in real life, Robbie was actually well-established before Weaving was; and forwards through Robbie’s ascent to superstardom months later with her megahit Barbie. Weaving, meanwhile, has since been leaning into her career as a scream queen.

That’s not a dig at Weaving. Some of our best actresses are scream queens. It’s kind of perfect that Weaving bears passing resemblance to one of the world’s more famous current stars; it emphasizes what she’s willing to do, in contrast to the more well-manicured image of someone in the stratosphere. Even at a time when a horror-centric career is vastly more respectable than it was even a decade ago, there are certain Weaving specialties you should not expect to see from Robbie anytime soon. You’re not going to see the latter soaked in blood as people burst like blisters all around her, as in Weaving’s signature sorta-hit Ready or Not. (A sequel is coming next year.) You’re not going to see Robbie getting killed as the familiar face in a Scream opening sequence, or silently running through the forest cover in blood (again) in a stripped-down action-horror movie like Azrael, or driving a car through a casino, which is something Weaving does in her new streaming movie Eenie Meanie.

Boy, it’s not a very good movie. It is suffused, maybe even saturated, with screenwriterly conceits, right from the title, a convoluted play on words (?) based on the fact that Edith Meanie (Weaving) was nicknamed “Edie” and then “Eenie” during her years as a prodigious teenage getaway driver. What does the nickname have to do with anything in the movie? Well, it rhymes, so… to answer your question, nothing. Edie is trying to go straight but keeps getting pulled back into the orbit of her ex-partner John (Karl Glusman) – which is why she’s recently pregnant with his child and, in turn, amenable to doing One Last Job to save him from their old crime boss Nico (Andy Garcia). Hence the car driven through the casino; it’s a gimmick display, holding a massive prize payday for a card tournament. Stealing the money involves replacing the car (which is not supposed to be easily drivable) and getting a performance driver (that would be Edie) to take it away.

It’s a fun enough idea that briefly seems positively inspired when you see Weaving at the wheel; she has just the right angularly stylized look of determination. Here in particular, with two-tone hair and an in-and-out Joisey Lite accent, she’s like an anime Margot Robbie. This might sound redundant given that Robbie has played actual cartoon character Harley Quinn and actual plaything Barbie. But there’s a sweetness, even innocence, to many of Robbie’s cartoonier roles – that’s partially what her lunatic Babylon performance is exploiting – and Weaving has a scrappier, street-fightier energy. She’s still likable; it’s just that she looks like she could go feral at any moment, perfect for a high-tension crime thriller.

Eenie Meanie tries to take advantage of that, but: again, the screenwriting. The script feeds her and all the other actors lots of faux-colorful and strenuously overwritten profanities, trying for pulp-fiction poetry but widely missing the Elmore Leonard/Quentin Tarantino standard. The filmmakers seem to want some hard-boiled cred, but their main way of seeking it is to abruptly kill off side characters with startling cruelty. This Deadpool-ish attitude (screenwriters of that movie produced this one) then has the nerve – or is it cowardice? – to use pregnancy and a told-not-shown romantic relationship as cheap stakes-raisers. Mostly this means the movie is flippant and cruel, then decides it has a heart.

It’s also not the first movie of 2025 to misplace Weaving in a mess of supposed cleverness. No less a collaborator than her own husband botches Borderline, where her writer/director/partner Jimmy Warden casts her as a spoiled ’90s pop star stalked by a maniac (Ray Nicholson, son of Jack). Once again, she’s streaked with blood; it’s nearly as much a part of her signature look as her eyebrows tracing dark swoops of skepticism across her brow or her pronounced eyeliner. And once again she proves that she has the charisma to imitate someone famous and glamorous, whether an amalgam of pop archetypes or a winking rip-off of Margot Robbie, with that extra dash of grit. But Azrael was the peak of only needing Samara Weaving, a few buckets of blood, and semi-anonymous attackers to put together a compelling genre movie, her 2025 movies have hinted that filmmakers are getting a little too cocky, relying on her the way studio pictures used to sometimes lean on the biggest stars of the day to auto-fix their mediocrities.

That’s a compliment to Weaving, and also a signal that she should be flooring it in another direction. Not away from genre pictures or horror or buckets of blood, but away from movies that see her as a shortcut. (OK, she gets a pass for indulging her husband; Borderline is really just a movie without enough material to support 90 minutes.) Winking at her resemblance to Margot Robbie is a sly joke. Winking at her resemblance to better Samara Weaving vehicles is beneath her talent.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.

Watch Eenie Meanie on Disney+/Hulu