If you are desperate to see some good acting or a period drama you might like this, but if you are a fan of Shirley Jackson's work or think you are going to see a biopic of her life you might find it on the offensive side. I did.
I would have liked to see a real biopic of Shirley Jackson but since this is pure fiction and it was not at all flattering I found it difficult to enjoy. To take a real-life figure who is not in the far-and-distant past, a woman who has living children and close descendants and to use them to garner attention for your not terribly original film is crossing a line of good taste into exploitation.
Everyone giving this a positive review should read some of the reactions from Shirley's children about their fun-loving mom who drove them to cub scout meetings and put three squares on the table even as she was making great art. Especially those thinking you are anti-feminist somehow if you dislike this movie - I could argue the opposite since it destroys a ground-breaking female writer's reputation - all I have to do is read how many people here believe this movie is a biopic to know that.
The movie itself is a confusion of 'reality' and fantasy (not in a good way) and I came away feeling like the writer couldn't come up with a good enough (book) or script without throwing in Shirley Jackson as a cheap way to get sales. The movie made me feel the same way Ed Wood or The Disaster Artist did - why spend all that energy making a film just to sully someone else's image? Why not just make something original?
The music choices were simply bizarre, as if throughout the filmmakers are trying to remind you Jackson is a horror writer. They did not match the often maudlin scenes. The plunking piano during the sex scene - strange. The nods to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Yellow Wallpaper are obvious and felt a little cheap and, well, derivative.
Moss is excellent as are the other actors, and the statements made about women in that period were good and just, but in watching the movie I felt like I was engaging in totally false gossip about a writer who is far superior to the one who wrote this movie. Perhaps it is fitting in these times of obscuring the truth, but slanderous nonetheless.
