Shirley

I want my money back

Outstanding acting but the story never really went anywhere. I found myself watching the movie in 2 sessions, keeping up with the narrative felt quite laborious and almost difficult at times. In the end, It all just seemed out of sorts. Could of been great.

My intuition led me to this film. Quite to my surprise it’s a new favorite of mine. Elizabeth Moss gives the film a seductive edge that is both sincere and insidious. It plays on our expectations only to subvert them in the most enjoyable ways. This is gold.

Worst movie I have ever seen. So what is the point here.

Save ur money if you have a hulu subscription.

Please ignore the reviews that claim this movie is anything less than a coherently written & directed story about the iconic, agoraphobic, and aggressively anti-social Horror author, Shirley Jackson. Elizabeth Moss bounces back from her previous film (The Hollow Man), and in this film she’s finally given a competent screenplay to sink her teeth into. Moss DISAPPEARS into the role of the real life recluse that was Shirley Jackson — a female Horror writer who was so ahead of the curve that her stories can put anything written by Stephen King to shame to this day. Her work has aged THAT well. Roughly 75 years ago her first short story was published in The New Yorker and was titled, “The Lottery.” This made her an overnight literary sensation in America. What’s more, is that the small town gossip in which she lived about her unconventional behavior not just as a 1950’s housewife in middle America, but radically different for anyone living anywhere at that time. What little information gleaned by local town gossips was spread like wildfire throughout the country; Shirley Jackson had unintentionally & unknowingly allowed the public to interact with her just enough for the media to craft their own fictions about Shirley Jackson...stuff meant to be interpreted as just some playful stretching of the truth in order to make the talented author even more marketable by blurring the line between fact & fiction. By implying that Jackson was of some netherworld who did not belong in this one — for no mind from the real world could ever conceive the caliber of derangement, (not to mention such emotional detachment!), that Shirley Jackson had made a wildly successful reputation writing about. Given my personal familiarity with & affection for Shirley Jackson’s fiction, I am probably biased in my review of this movie. However, I’ve given myself a few days and an additional viewing before writing this review — just to prevent the sort of overzealous praise that people give when they go into a movie already wanting to love it no matter what. That being said, I still think my high praise of this unique drama about one of the biggest legends in the history of Literary Horror is justified/warranted. The only people who wouldn’t enjoy and/or appreciate this film are the ones who try to tell you that the 2019 Cats film “wasn’t as bad as you think.” Full Disclosure: I’ve wanted to dislike Elizabeth Moss in TV/Film productions I’ve seen since learning the unfortunate fact that in real life Moss is yet another talented Hollywood actor to be lured in to the evil cult of Scientology. BUT I STILL LOVED HER PERFORMANCE IN THIS EXTREMELY STRONG FILM.

Had to force myself to be invested and still no payoff... The two biggest issues I have with this film is direction and tone. The acting was incredible; the script felt pretentious at times, but overall really good; the handheld cinematography was great. But the intersection where all these meet felt like a tragic accident. The tone of the film changes so much. The pretentious use of contrapuntal music and eerie sounds takes you out of the narrative. It’s supposed to be a tool to help the audience know what to pay attention to. Some of the lines felt like they were supposed to be “quote lines” or Oscar lines that everyone is supposed to remember...well it felt unearned.