Shirley

But the filmmakers decided to make this film anyway despite a flawed script. Dismal directing and over-the-top performances. This film is so damn boring unless you are interested in looking at close-ups of Elizabeth Moss without makeup emoting strange faces at the camera in scene after scene. Just didn't work.

"Shirley" takes place soon after the publication of Jackson's piece of short fiction, "The Lottery", published in 1948. While both the novel and film adaptation of "Shirley" document aspects of the writer's life, the central narrative of Rose and Fred Nemser, a couple who moves into the writer's Bennington home, is completely fictional.

Elisabeth Moss who also was a producer stars as Shirley Jackson, rude, crude and inappropriate most times but successful as an author of horror stories. I can't say I really enjoyed this movie, Shirley and her husband were not very nice people. But Moss does a wonderful job in the role and it is good to know something about her life.

I watched it at home on DVD from my public library, my wife skipped.

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.

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.