Shirley

Young married couple Rose (Odessa Young) and Fred Nemser (Logan Lerman) arrive at Bennington College to start his job. She is taken with famous author Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss). Shirley's husband Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg) hires the young couple to keep their home.

The film is able to capture the instability of the various relationships but I had trouble zeroing in on the stakes for most of the movie. It's not until Shirley tells Rose the truth that some stakes are injected. Before that, the two marriages have different levels of dysfunction but it only threatens to reach other levels of dysfunction. For me, the movie meanders for the first two thirds and then blows down the door in the last act. There are better ways to build up the tension and the drama in a smoother way.

Elisabeth Moss & Michael Stuhlbarg are terrific actors & deliver very strong performances in this uneven film. The script is all over the place, the tone if off and the film can't decide if it wants to be an edgy biopic or another Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? I'm a big fan of Shirley Jackson's writing & wanted to like this movie but found it so sloppily made and un-involving, it was a disappointment.

"Shirley" benefits from a harrowing lead performance from Elisabeth Moss and an acute sense of storytelling, but I don't get all the hype surrounding the film. . In this drama inspired by a true story; Shirley Jackson, a famous horror writer, finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple. . Elisabeth Moss is a force and you can't deny that fact, and I really love that "Shirley" is a film featuring strong female leads, a female director and writer. Although, I don't agree with all the positive response this film is receiving. It's not a bad film but it definitely requires a lot of your attention and I don't think it's all it's meant to be. "Shirley" is very much an intriguing story with great performances but the outcome isn't as great as you'd expect. . Follow @snobmedia for all reviews!

I kept watching this movie to see if it would get any better. It didn't. I only gave it a five because for the most part the acting was good.

As other reviews mentioned, it's a slow burn with not much happening. It's really much better depicted as a slow drama, certainly not a thriller. The characters are very unlikeable and while that's often written by design, it does very little to drive the plot forward.