Shirley

Shirley is set in the mid-twentieth century and centres on the American writer Shirley Jackson, who lives with her husband, the college professor Stanley Hyman. A young couple, Rose and Fred Nemser, come to stay with them, and Rose, an admirer of Shirley's work, becomes drawn into the older woman's orbit. What begins as a friendship of sorts between the two women develops into an unsettling and increasingly dangerous relationship, one that feeds the writing Shirley is struggling to get onto the page. The film is a drama with mystery and thriller elements, and it takes the household and the marriage as the ground on which its tensions play out.

Josephine Decker directed the film from a screenplay by Sarah Gubbins, with Christine Vachon, Elisabeth Moss and Simon Horsman producing. It follows Decker's Madeline's Madeline and precedes The Sky Is Everywhere and Chasing Summer in her filmography. Moss plays Shirley Jackson, with Odessa Young as Rose Nemser, Michael Stuhlbarg as Stanley Hyman, Logan Lerman as Fred Nemser, Victoria Pedretti as Katherine and Robert Wuhl as Randy Fisher; twenty-one cast members and ninety-one crew members are credited.

Shirley runs 107 minutes and was released in September 2020 in the United States. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.1 out of 10 from about 14,000 votes, and on TMDB it stands at 6.1 out of 10 from roughly 214 votes. A film critics' rating of 7.5 out of 10 from 264 reviews places it noticeably higher with critics than with the audiences recorded on IMDb and TMDB.