Shirley Jackson wrote some really f***ed up fiction, so it’s only right and proper that Shirley Jackson was f***ed up in real life. The agoraphobic shut-in will probably remind you of that family member who doesn’t go outside or talk to anybody or eat or sleep or bathe yet nonetheless has you pandering to their every frivolous and occasionally off-color desire out of either a sense of duty or a misplaced loyalty to inheritance.
Hmmm, I wonder if nasty people call her “Ms. Jackson.”
Most people of my age and background have read “The Lottery,” a disturbing short story by Ms. Jackson which decades later might serve as something of a prequel to The Hunger Games (not written by Shirley Jackson). I only mention this so that some of my readers will force themselves to remember Junior High, which is also disturbing. Shirley Jackson was a local to my corner of the world, apparently. Woohoo? I couldn’t be more proud? Around college age, she moved to the Northeastern United Stets and –as far as I can tell – never returned.
None of that matters; we pick up the story where Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss) is too old and creepy to be mistaken for young and too young to be permanently old and creepy. Her husband, Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), is a professor at Bennington where (from what I could tell) he belonged to the “coed of the week” club … that guy went through undergrad skirts like you could check them out at the campus main library.
Oh, but don’t feel sorry for Shirley just yet; I’m pretty sure she got around, too, which is awesome given the fact that 1) she doesn’t get around and 2) her personality closely resembled that of somebody out to steal Toto from Dorothy. I suppose Shirley was aided by not needing to pick a team; that will increase your potential adultery field twofold.
The suckers, er, I mean, the protagonists here are Rose and Fred Nemser (Odessa Young and Logan Lerman), two aspiring somethingerothers who are present only to get tag-team abused by Shirley and Stanley. Down on their luck, the Nemsers have taken a live-in caretaking situation only to realize they’re secretly in Shelob‘s lair, the giant spider having migrated from Middle Earth to write fiction in small-town Vermont.
I’ve seen biopics where the director had less esteem for their subject (Jimi: All Is By My Side comes to mind), but not many of them. I get the distinct impression that writer Sarah Gubbins and director Josephine Decker both appreciated Shirley’s talent but were repulsed by her person. Shirley only ever manages to get on our good side by comparison as her husband comes off as a narcissist and the Nemsers come off as jello.
Shirley itself plays like a horror film without the horror. There are shadowy interiors and evil glances and pronouncements that send tizzies while two “normies” stand around wondering what’s going on. Thing is, this isn’t a horror; it’s just the biopic of a woman who wrote well, but didn’t play well with others. Elisabeth Moss is angling for something here; we can see she’s taken on a juicy role and revels in the sticky webs she’s spun, but there’s really not much to this film. Don’t like Shirley? Leave. Nothing is keeping you there, Nemsers. And for the psychological babble going on, the answer is the same: don’t like it, leave. Which is probably why I should have done an hour in.
Here’s the woman who wrote The Lottery
Caught up in mischievous snottery
She lures big-eyed does
Fascinated, goodness knows
And then breaks them like fragile pottery
Rated R, 107 Minutes
Director: Josephine Decker
Writer: Sarah Gubbins
Genre: Diet horror (now 100% horror free!)
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Shirley Jackson
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Suckers
