Sundance 2020: 10 Films Everyone Is Buzzing About

4. Shirley

Shirley Elisabeth Moss
Los Angeles Media Fund

The premise of Shirley sounds like it would make for a great episode of The Twilight Zone, or something in that vein. A "fictional biography" of acclaimed mystery novelist Shirley Jackson (who wrote The Haunting of Hill House, which Netflix recently adapted into a show), Shirley stars Elisabeth Moss as the title character, and tells a story that didn't actually happen to her in real life. Thankfully.

The movie follows a young married couple that moves in with Jackson and her husband, but it doesn't turn out to be sunshine, rainbows and happy families: Jackson is in an unhinged mental state, and uses the young wife (as well as a missing local college girl) as inspiration for her next gothic novel.

Moss has been earning a ton of praise for her starring role, with critics calling the actress' performance "fearless" and "terrifying", while the movie's dreamy and unconventional visual style - as well as its strange audio cues, which include noises like bird song and train whistles - will constantly keep you on edge, questioning what exactly is going on.

Shirley hasn't been picked up by a distributor yet so it's unclear when we'll get to see it, but judging by its 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes (as of writing), it will likely be snapped up soon.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!