Shirley

2020 Directed by Josephine Decker

A famous horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple.

Elisabeth Moss Odessa Young Michael Stuhlbarg Logan Lerman Victoria Pedretti Robert Wuhl Paul O'Brien Orlagh Cassidy Bisserat Tseggai Allen McCullough Tony Manna Molly Fahey Edward O'Blenis Ryan Spahn Ava Langford Thomas Racek Emily Decker Lexa Hayes Adelind Horan Steve Vinovich

107 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by brat pitt ★★★★ 6

out of all eight 2020 releases i’ve seen (lol), Shirley is by far my favorite. josephine decker has acheived auteur status — just like in Madeline’s Madeline, the camera swirls around her characters, the framing focusing on fragments of their faces, proffering a dreamy drift through the woods of vermont. it blurs the line between muse and friend and lover, and highlights the tendency of artists to take advantage of the people who inspire them most. should a muse be honored? disgusted? resentful?
there are so many stories about eccentric older male geniuses and their pretty young muses, but this is one of the only ones i’ve seen where said genius is a woman. shirley is messy and spiteful and capricious…
Review by Lucy ★★★★ 6

“you could run, run fast away from me but you don’t. why don’t you? why do you stay?”
sometimes the strange bonds we find ourselves ensnared in can free us, change us. this might be less about the bond itself and more about the abstract changing, but it’s fascinating either way. the porch swing scene might be the best of the year so far. i know what i’m about
Review by fran hoepfner ★★★★ 9

good movie for a person like me, whose chief complaint about Midsommar was "there's not enough stuff about grad school"
Review by adrianbalboa ★★★★ 2

opening scene is a visual representation of being in 10th grade english class and getting really hot and bothered over the haunting ending of The Lottery and then immediately thinking about fucking percy jackson on a train
subsequent scenes are 11th grade when u realize you are also attracted to women
Review by Karsten Runquist ★★★★ 10

The only thing stranger than Josephine Decker’s work is Michael Stuhlbarg’s face.
Review by aaron ★★★★ 4

unhinged elisabeth moss should be a new film genre at this point
Review by iana ★★★★½ 6

unlike anything josephine decker has made before and yet her fingerprints are everywhere. what a fascinating, thrilling, hypnotic mind trip. the kind of film that gives you goosebumps.
Review by laura ★★★★ 3

haunting AND horny?! as soon as elisabeth moss said she was a witch, i was all in. would personally love for her to come over to my house, fill her wine glass to the brim, pour the rest of the bottle all over the couch and then grab my face and tell me i’m boring.
Review by justmiaslife ★★★★½ 4

Logan Lerman returns as the white boy of the month, Michael Stuhlbarg is the only person ever to portray a Jewish and poetical professor because he has set the standards to high and Elizabeth Moss delivers her most frightening and layered performance to date. It‘s her year.
„Shirley“ is dreamlike, blends reality together with fiction and mixes drama with suspense. It almost feels like a dark fairytale, because it is completely hypnotizing, there is so much crammed into such a short of run time and oh my gosh is it visually beautiful. It often times feels like the mist in the morning that whirls up it‘s surroundings. It‘s a picture that is so good that you‘re connected even to the smallest detail. And believe me, this one will stay with you for a while.
Review by davidehrlich ★★★★ 3

When the news first broke that “Madeline’s Madeline” filmmaker Josephine Decker would be making a starry movie about the author Shirley Jackson, it was hard not to be disappointed (or at least caught by surprise) that one of the most feral, elastic, and vividly singular artists of contemporary American cinema was following her first masterpiece with something that might be classified as a biopic. Shudder. Speaking as one of Decker’s still-fervent devotees, the hope was that her next project would find her reaching deeper into her own mind instead of squeezing her immense talents into the architecture of someone else’s imagination, and the fear was that the financial demands of a period piece would constrain her uniquely generative creative process.…
Review by Logan ★★★★½ 14

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

These ladies are GAY‼‼‼‼‼‼‼ and they 🍑😛
You might ask is this the feminist call me by your name?🥴 and the answer is YES BITCH IT IS.
Gurl I know tom hardy is sitting in his living room having a panic attack. Capone is shaking in his boots most likely shitting his bed
This is what capone should have been. Before I start this review I only just found out Elisabeth moss is problematic so I officially unstan,🙅🏻‍♂️ I dont condone to her actions or who she is. However imma talk about her performance, because she knows how to deliver a PERFORMANCE.😳 Literally it gave me so much anxiety at how she nailed being so edgy and dark. Not to…
Review by katie ★★★★

i feel the exact same way about shirley that i felt about madeline's madeline: uncomfortable, somewhat disgusted, a little in love, and ready to never watch it again.

Recent reviews

Review by Sarah

ohhhh wowwwwww this was great
Review by Sarah Miller ★★★½

Josephine Decker is making films unlike anyone else right now, and I'm extremely excited to see what else she has up her sleeve
Review by Facupisnu ★★★★

Muy buena.
Review by Rohan ★★

Got 45 minutes into the movie and I just didn't care about any of the characters that I had to stop watching. Shirley was obviously a kind of shitty person but they never gave her any qualities to keep watching.
Review by Travis Acevedo ★★★★

On the one hand, it's nice to see that Josephine Decker can translate her feral indie talents on to a hack job. She's sure-handed in every regard at pulling this through as a semi-stand "artist at work" biopic while she works the fills with her own eccentricities. Still, as a devotee of hers (Thou Wast Lovely & Mild and Madeline's Madeline were both films that had me thumping up and down in my theater seat), my mind wanders to what she could have done with this if she had been allowed to truly cut loose.
Lizzy Moss is spectacular as always. That this came out at around the same time as The Invisible Man should mark her as one of the…
Review by ɪ ɴ ɴ ᴀ ★★★½

the porch scene and victoria pedretti crawling on a tree branch with a bunch of girls... yeah
Review by nelsoncesar ★★★½

Sim, Elisabeth Moss merece um Oscar!
Review by chrishealy ★★★★

Elizabeth Moss 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Review by Clesydra ★★

I really liked what it was going for initially. But then I feel the ending really took a big ol' crap on anything remotely important the movie was trying to say. Overall pretty disappointing and a slog to get through when the pay off is nothing. I went in with literally no expectations for this movie and was let down by it ignoring everything it set up and instead going for ambiguousness for the sake of ambiguity
Review by Nicolas Bittencourt ★★★

Elizabeth Moss is one of the greatest actresses of our generation. Only her to make this character so deeply complex and appealing at the same time
Review by ginger✨ ★★★★★

elizabeth moss: *stares intensely at camera while smoking a cigarette*
me: yes. exquisite. five stars.
Review by Matthew Smith ★★★½

6.7/10