Shirley (2020)

Shirley is special because it doesn’t treat literary genius like a museum exhibit—it makes it feel alive, dangerous, and a little intoxicating, as if inspiration were a séance you’re not sure you should attend. Elisabeth Moss turns Shirley Jackson into a force of nature: funny, cruel, wounded, magnetic, and impossible to look away from, while Josephine Decker’s direction wraps the house in a dreamy, disorienting tension that keeps reality and imagination flirting at the edges. The film hums with tart humor and psychological bite, letting power games, desire, and creativity swirl together until you can practically feel the air thicken. If you want a conventional, cradle-to-grave biopic, this isn’t it—but if you’re up for a stylish, unnerving character study that plays like a gothic mood piece with teeth, it’s a spell worth sitting under.

Shirley wants to be less a straight biopic and more a feverish, psychological portrait of Shirley Jackson’s creative life, with reality and invention deliberately bleeding together. Josephine Decker’s direction is moody and immersive, and Elisabeth Moss is reliably magnetic, but the film can feel like it’s withholding clarity on purpose—more vibes than plot, more suggestion than payoff. If you want a clean mystery, a conventional thriller engine, or a historically grounded account you can “follow,” this may come off frustrating and a bit self-conscious in its dissembling. If you’re up for an unsettling, performance-driven character study with period atmosphere (and some explicit sex and steady drinking/smoking), it has real bite even when it’s not entirely coherent.