Fred Nemser (Logan Lerman) and his wife Rosie (Odessa Young) are on their way to Bennington, Vermont, where Fred will be starting a residency at the local university, under the guidance of Professor Stanley Edgar Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), a revered academic known for his depth of knowledge of literature, and his notoriously challenging approach to literary criticism, which is contrasted with his overly-cheerful attitude that welcomes the young couple and sets them at ease. They are initially set to reside with Stanley and his wife, who Rosie soon discovers is the acclaimed horror writer, Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss). They anticipated that Shirley would be somewhat aloof, being a notable recluse who would much rather write than socialize – however, never expected her to be an unhinged, volatile individual who frequently asserts her own perversions onto her visitors, while her husband simply resigns to the fact that his wife has gone past the point of no return. However, these initial first impressions turn out to be far from the truth, especially as Rosie grows closer to Shirley, discovering that below the standoffish personality, she’s actually a broken woman trying to find her place in the world and navigate the perils of modern existence, which she seems hopelessly incapable of ever achieving beyond her work. Meanwhile, Stanley is aghast to discover that his protégé has slowly begun to occupy his space, and starts to feel threatened by Fred, who he fears is at risk of taking over his department, as he exhibits the same charm and intelligence, and when coupled with his youthful vivacity, might mean that Stanley may be rendered as outdated, a relic of the past. Against the advice of her husband (who sees himself as superior to her, and who is asserting his own insecurities onto his wife as a result of his own inner quandaries), Shirley sets off to write a novel based on the story of a local university student who went missing – and over the next six months, reality and fiction begin to blur, and the two couples start to intertwine in unexpectedly terrifying ways, being forced to come to terms with the despair lurking beneath their idyllic suburban, university-mediated lives, and realize that not everything is what it seems in their supposed academic paradise.

Josephine Decker is the future of filmmaking – this was something made very clear a few years ago when her third feature film, Madeline’s Madeline, proved to be one of the key entries into a growing revival of experimental independent cinema that is hearkening back to the days of underground filmmaking. Shirley is her most recent, and some would say most ambitious, project to date – and only further proves that she is on the precipice of a major breakthrough, as this gorgeously bizarre manifesto of a film is one of the year’s most exceptional artistic achievements and one of the new decade’s first true masterpieces. A film built out of nothing but beautiful contradictions, Shirley is a darkly satirical drama that is as gorgeously compelling as it is hideously insidious, flourishing into one of the most incredible psychological thrillers produced in quite some time. There are innumerable reasons as to why Decker’s vision should be celebrated – working alongside screenwriter Sarah Gubbins (who had the herculean task of condensing the life of Shirley Jackson into a single narrative, adapting a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell, which presents a semi-fictionalized account of the latter days of the noted author), Decker puts together a piercingly disconcerting drama composed of truly despicable characters from beginning to end, and relishes in the narrative anarchy she inspires through this approach, with the result being a challenging story of literary strife and psychological decay that is best compared to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, had it been produced through a collaboration between David Lynch and John Cassavetes. A perplexing work of unrestrained imagination and disconcerting horror, it’s impossible to see Shirley as anything other than an immensely impressive work of contemporary pseudo-fiction.

Shirley is an anomaly of a film – Decker creates something that simultaneously draws the viewer in, which roughly pushing them away, repulsing is us with its perverted, twisted sense of acidic humour that is often more mocking than it is comforting – its the rare kind of darkly comical work that puts the audience on the other side, laughing at our confusion while never allowing us to be in on the joke, to the point where it becomes almost an unpleasant experience, which is entirely by design and the result of a director who has frequently shown her disdain with the idea of film as entertainment, choosing to rather challenge the few who manage to make it through her demented but visionary works. Shirley seduces us with an alluringly bizarre understanding of the human mind, derived from a director whose entire career has been defined by these dark psychological ravings that make her work undeniably bewildering, yet so incredibly compelling at the same time. Decker wastes no time thrusting us into the heart of the story, refusing to ease us into her vision, and instead separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff at the very outset, and making it known that viewers are about to experience something truly polarizing. Forthright in its intentions, but still incredibly adept at providing a sense of complexity that is simply unprecedented in both form and content, Shirley is operating on a different narrative level, functioning as a layered drama that draws from innumerable sources, not only being restricted to a biographical account of the life of one of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic artistic figures but rather as a nuanced investigation into the root of the human condition, facilitated by the vision of a director who makes her purpose conspicuously obvious – and yet still managing to find new, unexpected ways to surprise (some would even say terrifying) the unsuspecting viewer, who may not be aware of the metaphysical journey that awaits them on the other side of this bewilderingly brilliant, unquestionably layered work of unconventional cinematic artistry.

Interestingly, Shirley is a film that defies any form of categorization, occupying an ambigious space between different genres, and sampling from them with subversive ease. The film is mostly a darkly comical psychodrama that employs heavy overtures of a demented thriller, and even some aspects of horror. The fact that the story is centred on one of the most famous horror writers of all time should indicate that there was some undercurrent of terror present throughout the film in some way, flourishing into a complex domestic horror that is far more unsettling than many more overt works of terror. There’s something to be said about the fact that Shirley is set almost entirely within a decrepit, overgrown mansion, one that immediately strikes the viewer as familiar insofar as it is often the setting for many horror stories – Decker and Gubbins knew what they were doing, especially since Jackson’s cultural legacy has mainly focused on her quintessential work of twentieth-century terror, The Haunting of Hill House, which has become the gold standard for many works of horror since, being a perpetual inspiration for many artists across the medium. In Shirley, this is very much a house haunted by something – but unlike more archetypal stories, the ghosts here are not unknown and don’t lurk in the shadows. Instead, they make themselves known frequently through the growing instability of these characters, who find themselves perpetually at the mercy of the insatiable spectres of the past. Decker takes on some of the more elegant aspects of the haunted house sub-genre and intelligently employs it here, in a way that is genuinely quite unsettling. Relying on implication and the inherent fear of not knowing what lurks just out of frame, the audience is immersed in this horrifying experience, taken on an exploratory voyage into the minds of a set of impossibly complex characters, and where escape is singularly impossible – not necessarily because we can’t step out of harm’s way, but because the way it attracts us closer towards it is too alluring to ignore.

Through relying on a fantastic screenplay that is built mainly on the despair that can be evoked through dialogue and implication, Shirley develops an unquenchable intimacy, presenting us with truths that none of us ever dared to witness or address, either because we didn’t ever actually consider the scope of what the truth is, or because we never felt comfortable thinking some of these themes apply to us. We simply can’t look away from the nightmarish vision Decker presents us with, with the film gradually enveloping us until we don’t even desire to escape its challenging portrayal of our deepest quandaries. Shirley is a film that proudly and openly taunts the viewer – it provokes our most closely-guarded anxieties and insecurities and forces us to lay it all bare for the story to exploit. It somehow comes to know each and every one of us, through the stark and honest portrayal of a set of universal themes that most of us didn’t imagine cinema to be capable of conveying. It burrows itself into the most vulnerable recesses of our minds and uses this spine-chilling story of humanity to further bolster its incredibly deranged premise that forces the viewer out of passivity and makes us realize the truly horrifying scope associated with the image of humanity that Decker and Gubbins are so intent on exploring. Shirley is not an easy film in any way, but its immensely passionate approach to arousing disquietude is something to behold, and a reason why this is more than just a literary biography or an attempt to capitalize on the life of an enigmatic public figure and her unsettling private life – its a work of affecting postmodern consternation that has reached an apex through the director’s ability to derive the most impactful content from a relatively simple premise, and placing the audience in a more active position to buttress the numerous themes that form the foundation of this bewildering psychological drama.

However, as fascinating as the overarching metaphysical themes that persist throughout the film are, Shirley would simply not be anything without the characters, and much like all of Decker’s previous work, there is meticulous attention put on constructing realistic figures. At the core of the film is a real-life individual, and while it does take artistic liberties throughout, the character of Shirley Jackson is an anchor to the film, but not the sole concern. What is most striking about the characterization of Shirley is that everyone in the film is both a hero and a villain at different points in the story, and are never placed in a singular category for that long. The four central figures are all simultaneously victims and perpetrators, depending on the particular contextual interaction we’re witnessing at any given time. This presents us with a masterful example of how to write characters to be far more than just mere archetypes, there to satiate some archaic view of what a theatrical figure should represent in the wider scope of a story. The film develops them in exceptionally interesting ways and brings out some incredible performances from the cast at the same time. Throughout the film, each glare, each vitriolic utterance, harbours such perfectly-calibrated animosity, it is surprising that the film managed to be as profoundly moving as it is – I consider this to be a testament to the wonderful work done by Decker and Gubbins in bringing this demented story to the screen, and the actors involved in interpreting them, being given roles that challenge them, both as performers and as individuals. Elisabeth Moss, as the titular author, exhibits a venomous honesty that proves her to be one of her generation’s finest actresses, with her performance being a masterful portrayal of a woman who isn’t on the verge of a breakdown – she’s so far gone into her own mental decline, there is nothing left but to come to terms with it, which is something she has managed to do, but which the other characters tend to struggle. Michael Stuhlbarg, the perennially reliable character actor who never disappoints, is brilliant in equal regard, playing Stanley as an insecure sycophant whose position in life is threatened by the arrival of an academic wunderkind, whose growth he once facilitated, and now fears. Logan Lerman and Odessa Young have the unenviable task of standing toe-to-toe with Moss and Stuhlbarg, and while they may not command the screen in the same way, it would be foolish to consider their performances as a young couple slowly falling into their own kind of mental deterioration, any less impressive.

In furthering a discussion on the characterization, which is truly the core of the film, we can break the many loose narrative threads that persist throughout Shirley down into the very simple premise that fear governs this film, insofar as each one of these character is afraid of something. At the outset, the film draws correlations between the horror stories Jackson wrote, and her real life, with the younger couple venturing into unknown territory while crossing the threshold of a house that we immediately know harbours dark secrets. Like Nick and Rosie, the audience doesn’t know what is lurking just out of sight – and as the film progresses, we come to realize exactly what it is each one fo these four characters are fearing. Shirley is terrified of the outside world, demonstrating forms of agoraphobia and misanthropy that causes her to reject everything beyond her front door – and as the story delves deeper into her mind, we notice how she begins to fear the encroaching influence of the very people who purport to be there to help her – her loving husband, his charming assistant and, most significantly, the “wifey” who is brought in to help her, but turns out to be her biggest adversary, embodying everything a younger Shirley once was. Rosie, conversely, sees herself in Shirley, particularly in her unhinged mental state brought on by the pressure of a husband who is more attached to his academic pursuits than their marriage, and the fear that she herself will be a bad mother, and fall into the same kind of mental instability as the woman before her, a result of being forced into a position of docile subservience. There are overtures of Robert Altman’s Images in how the film presents us with a set of converse characters, and which manifests most notable in the characters of Stanley and Fred and their relationship, which starts as friendship and devolves into a bitter rivalry, with neither man being fully-willing to admit to it. Fred is afraid of failure – he fears his youth and inexperience is a liability, while Stanley fears the opposite – he has succeeded in life, but now fears that he is descending into mediocrity. When he calls Fred’s work “terrifically competent”, he’s not necessarily reflecting only on his friend’s work, but also his own inner realization that he is not infallible. Through their interactions over the six months in which the film takes place, each one of these characters sees glimpses of what their lives would be like if these fears are realized – and they begin to question whether their fears are all that different from their ambitions, and the narrow boundary that separates success from failure.

One of the final elements that are worth noting is is that, much like some of Decker’s previous work, Shirley adopts a looming sense of the supernatural. It wouldn’t be right to call this film a horror, for a number of reasons, but rather one that takes on some of the more notable tropes and manipulates them in fascinating ways. This is mainly evident through the blurring of the boundaries between reality and fiction, with the audience never being quite sure of what is real, and what is a figment of the over-active imaginations of the polarizing characters. When the titular author begins working on her novel, she visualizes the imagery through using those in her life as inspiration – but it’s when these clear-cut boundaries begin to fade away that the film starts to make a profound impact. Shirley is a work of controlled chaos – it’s built out of nothing but narrative and psychological anarchy, carefully-curated by a filmmaker who dismisses overarching logic while still managing to demonstrate profound restraint in how she handles the madness. Decker made a truly rebellious film that eviscerates expectations and takes the viewer on an unexpected journey to the heart of humanity, albeit from a very different direction, employing an approach that hopes to terrify us instead of moving us but ending in the same understanding of the psychological machinations that inspired this work in the first place. It remains elegant and striking throughout, never losing sight of its broader goals while being intrepid enough to continue to elicit a wave of vitriolic anger that pulsates throughout the film and leaves the audience utterly shaken in both terror and amazement. It refuses to lose that spark of unhinged madness that many works of unmitigated, daring genius tend to feature but instead uses it as a resource to comment on a wider set of narrative and thematic ideas that simply don’t manifest as effectively as they do here.

In bringing these many scattered ideas together, Shirley is a film that benefits massively from the three most important elements that govern a film like this – a well-written script that takes the time to explore the story, masterful director that manages to capture both the most intimate moments as well as the broader strokes of madness, and a set of performances that are bound to become definitive of this era in filmmaking, so quietly intense and profoundly honesty, natural to the point where it becomes quite disconcerting how far they have disappeared into these roles. Shirley is a film that acknowledges its craft while not being afraid to subvert it and go against the grain in unexpected ways, making bold decisions that are unquestionably enough to qualify this as a legitimate masterwork of contemporary psychodrama. It is provocative in the content it is built from, the message it wishes to convey and the form the story takes under the careful guidance of a visionary director like Josephine Decker. The camera occasionally lingers too long on a particular frame or goes in too close, which creates a sense of unease that never abates, and contributes to the unhinged terror that underpins this film. The film exists at the perfect intersection between style and substance, being complex but beautifully restrained in both cases, and functioning particularly well in all regards, and creating a sense of agitation in the viewer. Josephine Decker is truly one of the most exciting voices in contemporary cinema, an auteur whose vision is unprecedented, both in this particular medium and in the wider concept of artistry, where such originality and intrepidity is indicative of a seismic shift in the function of creation. Shirley stands as one of the year’s most fascinating works, and it is bound to be an enduring masterpiece for years to come. Films like this tend to have a habit of lingering, for better or worse – and there’s no doubt that this will be both celebrated and questioned for years to come.