Josephine Decker follows up her much celebrated film Madeline’s Madeline with this unconventional biopic, one that takes the work and life of horror writer Shirley Jackson and forges its own tale of suspense that is very much in keeping with the spirit of the iconic writer’s work.
Shirley Jackson is responsible for some of the most startling and frightening pieces of literature of all time, with The Haunting of Hill House remaining one of the most unsettling ghost stories ever put to paper. The author herself lived a short and troubled life, with health issues, a battle with agoraphobia and an unhappy marriage colouring her existence late in her 47 years of life. The power of her writing has gifted her a legacy that continues to get under the skin of genre fans everywhere.
That this sort-of-but-not-really biopic should be a strange and unsettling creature, one in which we’re unsure we can trust anything we’re seeing, feels perfectly in tune with its subject. Choosing to craft a fictionalised take on a period in Jackson’s life where she was developing her story ‘Hangsaman’, Decker’s film finds the means to craft a story that is beating with the same macabre heart that drove Jackon’s writing. As such, it is one of the more original takes on a biopic in recent memory.
When young married couple Rosie (Odessa Young) and Fred Nemser (Logan Lerman) move to Vermont so that Fred can begin working as a Professor at Bennington College, they move in with fellow Professor Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his wife Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss). As Shirley develops a new novel based around a missing girl, Rose finds herself at the mercy of both Shirley’s charms and deception, as it soon becomes clear that Rosie may be more of an inspiration for Jackson’s new novel than she originally thought.
Rosie is very much the audience vessel into the creaking old home of Jackon and her manipulative husband Stanley. Odessa Young brings a great deal of life and vivaciousness to the role, a life which becomes increasingly sapped as she slowly comes to realise just how suffocating her seemingly normal life is becoming. With an interest in the darker corners of the mind and Shirley’s writing, Rosie is compelled to get to know Shirley better, to integrate herself into Shirley’s writing process, all the while forgetting to hold her own guard up. She opens herself up willingly to Shirley’s love, abuse and desires. Young and Moss are electric together on screen and help make this strange tonic all the more intoxicating.
While Moss’ performance overall may rely a little too much on putting on a voice and staring intensely, she’s great at establishing a thought provoking persona around Jackson. This is a woman plagued by issues with mental health, exacerbated by her gaslighting (and you suspect jealous) husband. She is often shown to be quite pitiable, but also manipulative and prone to behaviour which is designed to hurt, with her fierce intelligence making her even more unpredictable. The central relationship with Rosie reveals both the best and worst of her character, and it makes for a fascinating portrait of the author, a woman who rejects the restrictions of social convention and has many rumours surrounding her, a fact that the film embraces tenfold. Stuhlbarg also clearly delights in playing a man with a dangerous and manipulative charm, making Stanley a figure that’s very enjoyable to dislike.
With intense close ups and an attention to rich and bright colours, Decker constructs a technicolour gothic fable that thrives on an atmosphere of unease. It creates an atmosphere that is very akin to Jackson’s own writing, and it is this factor that gives Decker’s film its most intriguing element. Choosing to honour its subject by evoking their work is a great way to construct a biopic around a figure whose life did seem as strange as her novels. It is quite the boiling pot of tension and intense emotion, as well as a sharp depiction of the writing process. It can be a little prickly to touch, but the pervading sense one comes away with is that Shirley Jackson herself would be somewhat proud of the way this film manages to get under your skin, worming its way in to occupy some of those darker corners of your mind.
Shirley
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