Elis­a­beth Moss goes a bit mad indoors in the Shirley trailer

How delec­tably apro­pos: in a sub­lime cos­mic coin­ci­dence that Shirley Jack­son her­self would’ve prob­a­bly appre­ci­at­ed, her new biopic (which finds the not­ed writer cooped up in her house, slow­ly los­ing it as she throws her­self at futile cre­ative pur­suits) comes to the pub­lic next month (just as we’ve been forced into approx­i­mate­ly sim­i­lar conditions).

Josephine Deck­er opened the sim­ply titled Shirley at Sun­dance a few months and sev­er­al eter­ni­ties ago, and it’s been build­ing buzz since as one of the most well-reviewed selec­tions at the fes­ti­val. And much of that praise has revolved around Elis­a­beth Moss’ lead per­for­mance as Jack­son her­self, all spiky wit­ti­cisms and alien­ation offens­es, a fit­ting fol­low-up to her tour de force in last year’s Her Smell.

The script joins Jack­son at a time of cre­ative block, as she pre­pares her next major work with no one but her pro­fes­sor hus­band (Michael Stuhlbarg) for com­pa­ny — until, that is, a younger cou­ple (Logan Ler­man and Odessa Young) move in to their spare room and trig­ger an intense psy­chodra­ma between the quar­tet. As Jack­son grows increas­ing­ly volatile, she begins play­ing dia­bol­i­cal mind games with the cap­tives in her state­ly manor.

The trail­er plays up the film’s occa­sion­al breaks from real­i­ty, a soft­ly exper­i­men­tal bent that made Decker’s pre­vi­ous fea­ture Madeline’s Made­line such a tri­umph. The most arrest­ing shot plops Jack­son and her desk in the mid­dle of her back­yard and floods her with a harsh spot­light, a sur­re­al tableaux visu­al­iz­ing a frag­ile state of mind.

At a time when everyone’s hard up for good new art films, Decker’s lat­est should arrive as a salve, and the closed-door trapped-in-the-house qual­i­ty should only ampli­fy that. At the very least, this should cement Moss’ rep­u­ta­tion as one of the great­est work­ing actress­es on the plan­et right now, an unpre­dictable tal­ent reli­able only in her excellence.

Shirley comes to VOD ser­vices in the US (Google Play, Ama­zon, YouTube, Vudu) on 5 June.