ShirleyMovies like Shirley
- Key Features:
- Writers block, Inspiration, Psychological thriller, Marriage, Dark secrets, Complex characters, Gothic setting, Isolation, Obsession, Creative process, Mental instability, Power dynamics, Literary adaptation
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Fans of psychological thrillers, Viewers interested in literary adaptations, Those who enjoy character-driven dramas, Audiences seeking suspenseful narratives
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Anxiety
Shirley

A famous horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple.
Shirley
Delphine is the author of an autobiographical novel that has become a bestseller. Exhausted by the promotional tour, just when she feels out of place, paralyzed by the idea of having to start writing again, she meets Elle, a young, attractive, intelligent, intuitive woman who seems to understand her better than anyone.

After a whirlwind romance with a wealthy widower, a naïve bride moves to his family estate but can't escape the haunting shadow of his late wife.

Set at the turn of the century, this is the tale of Ellen Rimbauer who just received this mysterious mansion as a wedding gift from her new husband...

Desperately seeking inspiration for the follow-up novel to his bestseller "Inexorable", Marcel Bellmer moves in his wife's old family mansion with his family.

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.

In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds… and remembers.

Kate and her daughter Beth live alone in an isolated farmhouse in the woods, but when Kate slowly begins to suspect that something sinister is happening, her motherly instincts are put to the test.

Desperate to save their marriage, a young couple takes a deal to move into their dream home, but disturbing events reveal the house's troubled history.

The newly married Elizabeth arrives with her new husband, the scientist Henry, at a magnificent house. He tells her that she can do there anything she pleases, except to enter a certain closed room.

After moving into a cottage together, two young lovers confront horrors of a forgotten childhood.

In the aftermath of her husband's death, widow Ramona's struggle to raise her two kids is hindered by the arrival of a mysterious woman with supernatural abilities.

Trying to recover from the nearly marriage-breaking stress following the death of their child, Jack and Stephanie spontaneously take off on a road trip. But when their car breaks down in a remote area, they find themselves in a horrific nightmare. Seeking shelter in a house, they soon realize that more danger lurks inside than outside in this spine-chiller based on Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti's best-seller.

After losing their baby, a married couple adopt 9-year old Esther, who may not be as innocent as she seems.

A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

Working-class waitress Slim thought she was entering a life of domestic bliss when she married Mitch, the man of her dreams. After the arrival of their first child, her picture perfect life is shattered when she discovers Mitch's hidden possessive dark side, a controlling and abusive alter ego that can turn trust, love and tranquility into terror. Terrified for her child's safety, Slim flees with her daughter. Relentless in his pursuit and enlisting the aid of lethal henchmen, Mitch continually stalks the prey that was once his family.

Sibyl, a jaded psychotherapist, returns to her first passion: writing. But her newest patient Margot, a troubled up-and-coming actress, proves to be a source of inspiration that is far too tempting. Fascinated almost to the point of obsession, Sibyl becomes more and more involved in Margot’s tumultuous life, reviving volatile memories that bring her face to face with her past.

Roger Cobb, a divorced horror novelist coming to terms with the disappearance of his young son, inherits an old mansion home to malevolent supernatural residents.

Following the death of her wealthy husband, American widow Kathryn West migrates to Italy and takes up a reclusive existence in a luxurious villa. After quickly succumbing to the charms of a local man, she lets him move into the villa and the two are later joined by his sister, which soon leads to complications.

In the late 18th century, two newlyweds move into the stately mansion of the Fengriffen family. The young bride is victim of terrifying visions and apparitions, threatening her very sanity. A London psychiatrist comes to her help and uncovers the terrible secret that haunts the estate.

A young couple's dream of starting a family shatters as they descend into the depths of paranoia and must struggle to survive an evil presence that wants nothing more than their very own lives.

A middle-aged woman, traumatized from the death of her adulterous lover, moves into a room at a New Orleans boarding house where the blind landlord becomes suspicious to her activities of continuing her affair with her dead lover.

Mort Rainey, a writer just emerging from a painful divorce with his ex-wife, is stalked at his remote lake house by a psychotic stranger and would-be scribe who claims Rainey swiped his best story idea. But as Rainey endeavors to prove his innocence, he begins to question his own sanity.

A man who loves games and theater invites his wife's lover to meet him, setting up a battle of wits with potentially deadly results.

A wife and mother is consumed by the thought that her husband's co-worker is trying to win him away from her and their family.

A screenwriter travels to an abandoned house to finish a script on time, but a series of strange events lead her to a psychological breakdown.

Following his great success with "North by Northwest," director Alfred Hitchcock makes a daring choice for his next project: an adaptation of Robert Bloch's novel "Psycho." When the studio refuses to back the picture, Hitchcock decides to pay for it himself in exchange for a percentage of the profits. His wife, Alma Reville, has serious reservations about the film but supports him nonetheless. Still, the production strains the couple's marriage.

A washed-up horror novelist arrives in a sleepy town on a book tour, only to stumble into a string of eerie murders. Haunted by dreams of a ghostly girl named V and guided by the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe, he’s drawn into a nightmarish world where fiction and reality blur—and the story he’s chasing leads back to his own buried guilt.

On her honeymoon, a young bride sleepwalks into the woods surrounding a secluded cabin. When she returns, she looks the same—but something about her is terrifyingly different.

Veronica, an aging film star, retreats to the Scottish countryside with her nurse Desi to recover from a double mastectomy. While there, mysterious forces give Veronica the power to enact revenge within her dreams.

Simone inherits a dilapidated farmhouse in France and makes her way there with her husband Eric and their two children. Her dream is to turn the house into a bed and breakfast but as the hectic pace of the rebuilding gets underway, she gets caught up in the romance and chaos of it all. Losing sight of her goals, she must find her way back to the dreams and ambitions which brought her there in the first place.

A young newlywed woman begins to have disturbing nightmares just after settling into the old mansion that has belonged to her husband's family for centuries. When her sinister dreams come true, the innocent bride is caught in a maddening maze of unspeakable horrors.

A shy, lonely film buff embarks on a killing spree against those who browbeat and betray him, all the while stalking his idol, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike.

A female Psychologist who has stopped practicing medicine, decides to take the case of Veronica de la Serna, a young woman whose previous therapist has mysteriously disappeared.

Reeling from the unexpected death of her husband, Beth is left alone in the lakeside home he built for her. Soon she begins to uncover her recently deceased husband's disturbing secrets.

A couple and their twelve-year-old son move into a giant house for the summer where things aren’t quite what they seem. Every time someone gets hurt on the grounds, the beat-up house seems to repair itself…

Successful author Veronica finds herself trapped in a horrifying reality and must uncover the mind-bending mystery before it's too late.

Newlywed Jennifer is brutally attacked at a dark rest stop. While healing from her injuries, she can’t recall anything from her past, including the ordeal. Her husband, Russell , is just thankful she’s alive and eager to get her home. As he reintroduces her to their secluded mountain estate, Detective Page pursues Jennifer’s assailant — his own daughter went missing and was never found. The same fate now awaits Jennifer, unless someone realizes that her loving caretaker is actually her captor.

A pregnant woman and her husband are taken in by a farmer and his wife after crashing their car in the Scottish countryside. Once inside, they realize their hosts’ daughter is a missing child from the news years earlier. Things take a sinister twist when the farmer and his wife inform the couple they intend to keep their baby once born.

When his wife is killed in a seemingly random incident, Harry, prompted by mysterious visions, journeys to discover the true circumstances surrounding her murder.

The lives of Ted and Marion Cole are thrown into disarray when their two adolescent sons die in a car wreck. Marion withdraws from Ted and Ruth, the couple's daughter. Ted, a well-known writer, hires as his assistant a student named Eddie, who looks oddly similar to one of the Coles' dead sons. The couple separate, and Marion begins an affair with Eddie, while Ted has a dalliance with his neighbor Evelyn.

Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

A wealthy New Orleans businessman becomes obsessed with a young woman who resembles his late wife.

Best-selling author Tyvian Jones has a life of leisure in Venice, Italy, until he has a chance encounter with sultry Frenchwoman Eva Olivier. He falls for her instantly, despite already having wedding plans with Francesca Ferrara. Winning Eva's affection proves elusive; she's more interested in money than in love. But Tyvian remain steadfast in his obsession, going after Eva with a fervor that threatens to destroy his life.

Kathryn, a struggling actress and unfulfilled housewife, becomes friendly with her new gardener, Ben. He gives her the attention and sensitivity she craves; however, he is not who he seems.

A family moves to a small California town where they plan on starting a new life running a long-abandoned funeral home. The locals fear the place, suspected to be on haunted ground.

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.

Catherine Clare reluctantly trades life in 1980 Manhattan for a remote home in the tiny hamlet of Chosen, New York, after her husband George lands a job teaching art history at a small Hudson Valley college. Even as she does her best to transform the old dairy farm into a place where young daughter Franny will be happy, Catherine increasingly finds herself isolated and alone. She soon comes to sense a sinister darkness lurking both in the walls of the ramshackle property—and in her marriage to George.

Rural England, 1865. Katherine, suffocated by her loveless marriage to a bitter man and restrained by his father's tyranny, unleashes an irresistible force within her, so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

A young woman is invited by her girlfriend, who lives in an English country mansion, to stay there with her. The estate, however, isn't quite what it seems--and neither is the friend who issued the invitation.

Joan Burrows returns to her hometown for her niece's graduation, only to be confronted by the serial killer she thought she offed years ago -- after he kidnapped and tormented her and her best friend.

When her husband's sex game goes wrong, Jessie (who is handcuffed to a bed in a remote lake house) faces warped visions, dark secrets and a dire choice.

Following a humiliating plagiarism scandal, an author moves to an isolated small-town house with her daughter to write her comeback novel. Desperate for inspiration, she communicates with a mysterious ghostly presence that has befriended her daughter.

Louise and Kasper want to become parents, but Louise cannot have children. She seals a pact with her Romanian maid, Elena, to bear her child, but things don't turn out quite as planned...

A couple is terrorized in their new house haunted by the vengeful ghost of the woman's former husband who possesses her young son.

When indie singer Grey struggles to write her sophomore album, she teams up with a mysterious producer at his secluded cabin. Though their bond strengthens her music, it also starts to irreparably alter Grey’s body and mind.

Dolores Claiborne was accused of killing her abusive husband twenty years ago, but the court's findings were inconclusive and she was allowed to walk free. Now she has been accused of killing her employer, Vera Donovan, and this time there is a witness who can place her at the scene of the crime. Things look bad for Dolores when her daughter Selena, a successful Manhattan magazine writer, returns to cover the story.

The wife and mistress of a cruel school master collaborate in a carefully planned and executed scheme to murder him. The plan goes well until the body, which has been strategically dumped, disappears. The psychological strain starts to weigh on the two women when a retired police investigator begins looking into the man's disappearance on a whim.

A psychiatrist becomes romantically involved with the sister of one of his patients, but the influence of her controlling gangster husband threatens to destroy them both.

A very gentle middle-aged man is married, but when he falls in love with another woman, he decides that to divorce his wife would humiliate her too much – so instead he decides to kill her.

Two co-workers, one a vain woman and the other an awkward teenager, share an increasingly bizarre relationship after becoming roommates.

After an accident, acclaimed novelist Paul Sheldon is rescued by a nurse who claims to be his biggest fan. Her obsession takes a dark turn when she holds him captive in her remote Colorado home and forces him to write back to life the popular literary character he killed off.

A visiting city reporter's assignment suddenly revolves around the murder trial of a local millionaire, whom he befriends.

A couple's ailing marriage is put to the test when they are held hostage in an isolated vacation rental by an unseen Voice that commands their every move and threatens harm if they don’t obey.

Successful writer and scholar Jonathan Merrick falls under the spell of the irresistible, bewitchingly beautiful Ligeia. She's fighting a fatal illness and she will stop at nothing to defeat death, her one true enemy.

A surrogate mother harbors a deadly secret desire for a family of her own with the husband who is expecting to raise her child.

Laura, traumatized by an abusive relationship, runs away from her former husband with her seven-year-old son Cody. But in their new, idyllic and remote sanctuary, they find they have another, bigger and more terrifying monster to deal with…

A troubled young woman wakes up one day as a different person - someone who is stalked by creatures.

A young writer is invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star who mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago. Surrounded by the star's cult of sycophants and intoxicated journalists, she finds herself in the middle of his twisted plan.

A young couple moves into a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania. What they don't know is that there is an unseen presence in the house, and that it wants to take possession of the wife.

A private investigator is forced into a dangerous alliance with a killer in order to uncover a quiet town’s grisly criminal underbelly and clear the name of her mentor, who is implicated in the crimes.

Publisher Will Atenton quits a lucrative job in New York to relocate his wife, Libby, and their daughters to a quaint town in New England. However, as they settle into their home the Atentons discover that a woman and her children were murdered there, and the surviving husband is the town's prime suspect. With help from a neighbor who was close to the murdered family, Will pieces together a horrifying chain of events.

At a remote lake house in the Adirondack Mountains, a couple entertains an out-of-town guest looking for inspiration in her filmmaking. The group quickly falls into a calculated game of desire, manipulation, and jealousy, unaware of how dangerously intertwined their lives will soon become.

A strange and destructive relationship develops between a chef and her neighbor, a former child actress.

Richard and Priscilla Parker are an ordinary suburban couple whose lives are invaded and rocked by their hedonistic, secretive new neighbors, Eddy and Kay Otis.

Wondering what has happened to herself, now feeling stagnant and in a rut, Shirley Valentine finds herself regularly talking to the wall while preparing her husband's chips and egg. When her best friend wins a trip-for-two to Greece Shirley begins to see the world, and herself, in a different light.

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

A newly dead New England couple seeks help from a deranged demon exorcist to scare an affluent New York family out of their home.

Doctor Frankenstein creates a mate for his monster, a woman called Eva, who promptly rejects the male creature. In turn, the doctor becomes obsessed with Eva, and tries to make her a perfect Victorian woman.

Samuel Salomon, a literature professor, has been off work for almost a year after the tragic death of his girlfriend. Samuel has been suffering from a recurring nightmare in which a woman is brutally murdered in a strange ritual. Suddenly, the same woman who appears every night in his dreams is found dead in exactly the same circumstances. Samuel sneaks into the crime scene and there he meets Rachel who has also dreamed about the murder. Together, they will do whatever they can to discover the identity of the mystery woman, entering a terrifying world controlled by the figures who have inspired artists throughout time: the Muses.

A cul-de-sac in an oppressive suburb becomes a literal dead end for wife and mother Karen Christianson when she is brutally murdered in her own home. In the wake of the event, Karen's teenage daughter Ellie begins to exhibit bizarre behaviors as she slowly acquires her mother's demeanor and mannerisms. Meanwhile, Karen's husband Ben nurtures a less-than-innocent interest in the family's sultry live-in nanny, Lena.

A country family of five take in charming cousin Julie, whose parents recently died in a car crash, though teenaged daughter Rachel grows suspect that she has an alternative agenda; one that possibly includes witchcraft.

Oona, a recent graduate in anthropology, has returned to her dead mother’s seaside cottage in southern England to prepare it for sale. Her arrival disturbs Mani, a wary vagrant who has been squatting on the property.

A young woman fakes her own death in an attempt to escape her nightmarish marriage, but discovers it is impossible to elude her controlling husband.

Friends, family, and lovers struggle to find love, forgiveness, and meaning in an almost war-torn world riddled with comedy and pathos.

When a friendless old widow dies in the seaside town of Crythin, a young solicitor is sent by his firm to settle the estate. The lawyer finds the townspeople reluctant to talk about or go near the woman's dreary home and no one will explain or even acknowledge the menacing woman in black he keeps seeing.

Claire is a lonely hairstylist who secretly murders and scalps her clients. When Olivia makes the well-intentioned mistake of asking Claire to style her hair for her wedding, she becomes dangerously obsessed, and her sanity starts to slip away with bloody consequences.

A playwright encounters a mysterious woman when he takes shelter in a chalet during a violent snowstorm and becomes obsessed with her.

Sadie—a young female novelist—and an enigmatic woman named Francesca, are enticed by an ex-lover to join him at his Italian villa for a weekend celebration being held to honor the release of Sadie's latest book. Once there, Sadie begins to fear his true intentions as she and Francesca become embroiled in a dangerous game of moral and sexual discovery.

A frustrated, angry teenage girl awakens something in the woods when she naively performs an occult ritual to invoke a witch to kill her mother.

When new parents Alex and Penny retreat from the city and move into a place outside town, the stress and massive sleep-deprivation caused by their infant has both of them seeing things in the house that may or may not exist. Persistent sightings of a strange woman has each of them wondering if they are suffering from hallucinations, or if their new home holds a dark, supernatural presence. As their fragile grasp on reality spirals into delirium, Alex and Penny find themselves nearly helpless to deal with the horrific truth of what is really going in this house.

In the sterile setting of a powerful multinational, a ruthless corporate executive and her ambitious protégée bare their claws in a vicious battle for supremacy.

A woman trying to recover from a sexual attack is locked in a posh apartment with a corpse of the very man she's been dreaming would murder her. She tries to hang on to reality when objects around her seem to come to life.

An anthology feature film that puts a uniquely dark and original spin on some of the most iconic and beloved holidays of all time by challenging our folklore, traditions and assumptions.

Stranded in the remote countryside after wrecking their car, a couple seeking to start over discovers that there's no escape from the sins of their past.

When their car breaks down, a couple on the run headed southbound for a fresh start in the Sunshine State break into a nearby house looking for a new set of wheels. What they find instead is a dark secret, and a sweet-as-pie pair of homeowners who will do anything to keep it from getting out.

Jackson and Helen are in love and about to have their first child when they move in with Jackson's mother, Martha, in order to take care of the family estate. But all is not well in this household. Martha is jealous of her son's affection for Helen, and, despite her Southern smile, she's starting to act strangely. As Helen tries to create a happy home life, Martha attempts to divide the family so that Jackson will become hers alone.



