A perversely entertaining take on a brief period of Shirley Jackson’s life gives the star one of her most daring roles to date
As willfully unconventional as a literary portrait could possibly be, Madeline’s Madeline director Josephine Decker’s take on Shirley Jackson is a thrillingly perverse example of what happens when the shackles of biopic formula are cast aside. Based on Shirley: A Novel, the acclaimed book from Susan Scarf Merrell, Shirley tells of a fictitious dynamic, an imagined period where a younger couple moved in with Jackson and her husband, but weaves in known details about the reclusive horror writer’s life and personality. It’s a strange construction but one that feels fitting given what we know of her, a woman who found reality and the rules that came with it to be rather pedestrian. It’s as unusual a film as she was an author and one imagines she’d get a devious kick out of the dark places the film takes us to.
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