Shirley review, Culture Whisper (LFF 2020)
Many have labelled Shirley an ‘anti-biopic’ of horror novelist Shirley Jackson, the dark mind behind The Haunting of Hill House. The conceit of this inverted sub-genre is using lies to tell truths about these prominent figures. Screenwriter Sarah Gubbins, taking from Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel, achieves exactly that.
Unlike the film, there was no young couple called the Nemsers who stayed with Jackson and her husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman. There was no Rose Nemser (Odessa Young) forming a strange and seductive bond with Jackson. There was no Fred Nemser (Logan Lerman) vying desperately for Hyman’s professorial attention, working as his assistant at the all-female college in Bennington, Vermont. There aren’t any kids running around, of which Jackson and Hyman had four.
