Shirley Jackson became one of the most infamous horror writers with stories of entire towns stoning a single person thanks to a lottery, a home where two sisters hide to be shunned from the town following a horrible murder, and even a house that seems to actively kill its inhabitants. In the new film from director Josephine Decker and writer Sarah Gubbins, the viewer gets a chance to go inside the mind of a writer known for notorious bouts of depression and a philandering professor husband.
Rose and her new husband, Fred, have been invited to spend a few days at the home of Stanley and his wife Shirley Jackson. On the train ride down, Rose reads Shirley’s story The Lottery and is enthralled. She wonders who could have thought of something so twisted and profound. They couple arrive during a party, and Rose’s illusions are quickly shattered as Shirley (Elizabeth Moss) basically advises she doesn’t care who Rose is, thinking she’s having an affair with her husband. Rose attempts to clarify by saying she is the wife of the new Teaching Assistant for Stanley’s class, but an emotionally exhausted Shirley is frustrated to find out that she’ll be sharing her house again with strangers. It doesn’t get much better when Shirley’s husband asks Rose if she can help clean up around the house since they’ve just had their maid quit. As Fred tries to get tenure as a professor, Rose scrubs and is tormented by Shirley. After some time, the two become close friends, and Rose assists in gathering information on a missing girl from the local university where both their spouses teach. Shirley is convinced this will be her next novel and begins to pour herself into it. Their friendship begins to awaken Rose to who she can be.
The film highlights the willful ignorance of both Fred and Stanley as they ignore women in distress and expect their absolute compliance. Rose is put in multiple situations worthy of a Jackson horror novella. She is battered and bruised emotionally, and her husband acts as if it is an easy thing to endure. Stanley expects a deeply depressed Shirley to come to the table and perform for him, even as he has constant affairs with faculty members and students.
Elizabeth Moss is perfect casting as Shirley Jackson. She brings her all to the role, and at times the viewer wonders if Jackson is mad or just so trapped in a frustrating marriage that she simply does things to make small dings in her prison walls. In one particularly poignant scene, Stanley tries to tell Shirley to stop working on the book she is writing about a missing girl from their college campus. As Stanley tells her that the girl isn’t work writing about, Shirley exclaims “Do not tell me I don’t know this girl, don’t you dare.” In this one line, Moss explodes with the rage of every woman who has been put in a box of expectations when they know they are capable of so much more. She knows there is something important in these women who are not taken in, and she knows she must share that with the world.
Shirley is an incredibly acted and well-written film. It is emotional to the point of twisting the viewers stomach in knots with the realization of entrapment.
Shirley will be available on Hulu, selected VOD and https://neonrated.com/virtual-cinema on June 5th.
