The only way that a biopic about the terrifying mind of horror author Shirley Jackson could work is with a fantastic cast and impeccably gothic direction. There is so much potential to make this story as compelling as one might expect, but unfortunately, for director Josephine Decker's Shirley, it never quite reaches that height. There is a lot to love about this film, including the performances from the entire cast and the cinematography that will leave the audience woozy, but there were also a lot more areas that this film could have covered to make its core plot even more interesting. Because of the influence that Jackson has had in the genre of horror and the familiarity I carry with some of her short stories, I was expecting a much more suiting story for audiences to learn more about the author. Decker plays around with a lot of interesting ideas but her failure to commit left me as unnerved as many of Jackon's stories have for decades.
Eloping to start their new life together, Rose (Odessa Young) and Fred (Logan Lerman) are offered free room and board by college professor Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg). The only catch is that Rose must look after and care for Stanley's wife, the famed horror author Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss). However, Rose and Shirley's developing relationship begins to threaten both of their marriages as the line between Shirley's fiction and reality begin to blur. This script, written by Sarah Gubbins and adapted from the novel by Susan Scarf Merrell, has some incredibly interesting things going on with it that, when they arose, made for some fantastic storytelling. The best part of this film were the relationships between the wives Shirley and Rose and their husbands Stanley and Fred. It was absolutely compelling to see how the pairs of people influenced each other and how, despite their best and most vocal efforts, Rose and Fred slowly began to turn into Shirley and Stanley. The impact of the older couple was tremendous and it was so interesting to see how Rose begins crawling down the same path that Shirley had once before. It was a strange idea to focus this film on Jackson's writing of her novel Hangasman but it created some fantastic comparisons from her internal reality of the story to the reality of the marriage between Rose and Fred. The performances from the entire cast were phenomenal, especially from Moss and Young and Stuhlbarg even excels as this supporting character. Moss continues being one of the best working actresses today and Young absolutely surprised me with the amount of depth she brought to this character. They all prove to be a captivating team but the technicals stood out to me just as much. The cinematography from Sturla Brandth Grøvlen was amazing and there were some great, characteristic choices to make the camera unsteady. As well made as this film was, however, I found the direction and rest of the script quite dull and, as Stanley puts it in one scene, derivative.
Calling Shirley a biopic about the famed writer would almost be incorrect but calling Shirley a deliriously informative horror film would be just as incorrect, I fear. This is where the majority of my problems with this film lie: the script is full of incredible themes and relationships to follow along with and see how Jackson came up with some of her most terrifying stories, but it never really went too deep into who she was as a person. This story never did much to explain how Jackson got the way that she was, with her plaguing alcohol and anxiety problems, and because of that, I was never fully invested in her as a human being. Moss does the absolute best she can with making Jackson interesting but I do believe she deserved more of Decker's focus, given that it is supposed to be a biopic on her after all. I was never expecting this film to follow the route of the typical biopic, however, as it definitely had the potential to be something much darker. This film could have greatly benefitted from plunging fully into the gothic horror that its titular character is so known for but it is constantly afraid to take that leap. For one of the gothic genre's greatest authors, I did not feel like Shirley did her much justice. The dream sequences and imagination that Jackson had while writing her novel did not happen enough to justify the prospective horror behind them and because of that, they just eventually felt out of place. And when the shy terror of this movie did attempt to show itself, it only came out in small bursts of Kubrick-esque eerieness, akin to the "crazy writer" stereotype made famous by The Shining. This film might not have ever chosen which side of its genre to stick with and while that works for lots of different movies, it just did not bode well for me. Overall, this film just left me feeling uneasy about everything that happened and now knowing who to empathize with because of its tone; so in that regard, I guess Decker did her job incredibly well.
Shirley is a film that is absolutely held up by its cast and technicals and one that a lot of audiences will still be able to learn from, thankfully. While I think Decker's intentions with this film were clear and she did a decent job with it, there is a lot of improvement that I feel could have gone into this movie to make it a much more engaging character study. Throwing in the additions of Rose and Fred was a smart choice to help personify the effect Jackson had on people, but in the long run, I would have much rather preferred a more concise telling of her life story.
My Rating: ★★½
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