Thank you Lucy Mangan at The Guardian for a fantastic review on Shining Girls! A solid 4 stars! Mangan describes Moss’ performance in the adaptation as “Ferociously intense, remarkably nuanced and completely unflinching […]”. After a short synopsis of the plot and a brief look at the characters, Mangan adds:
“When you add Moss’s remarkable, nuanced performance to the slightly slow pacing and the audience being arguably too far ahead of the protagonists, Shining Girls works better as a character study than a thriller (though it’s certainly worth watching as the latter). Kirby’s constant renegotiation of a world that changes without notice or permission around her is as fine an evocation of the profound and lingering results of trauma as you’ll see. To live a life suddenly full of unknowns, with the familiar made unfamiliar, the trustworthy now tainted by terrible knowledge, is something anyone who has been assaulted will recognise. One reality is replaced by another and another and another as you take two steps forwards and one back towards a new normality. Even as the female victim count adds up, Shining Girls keeps its integrity and never backs away from this underlying truth.”
“Kirby’s constant renegotiation of a world that changes without notice or permission around her is as fine an evocation of the profound and lingering results of trauma as you’ll see.”
“When you add Moss’s remarkable, nuanced performance to the slightly slow pacing and the audience being arguably too far ahead of the protagonists, Shining Girls works better as a character study than a thriller (though it’s certainly worth watching as the latter). Kirby’s constant renegotiation of a world that changes without notice or permission around her is as fine an evocation of the profound and lingering results of trauma as you’ll see. To live a life suddenly full of unknowns, with the familiar made unfamiliar, the trustworthy now tainted by terrible knowledge, is something anyone who has been assaulted will recognise. One reality is replaced by another and another and another as you take two steps forwards and one back towards a new normality. Even as the female victim count adds up, Shining Girls keeps its integrity and never backs away from this underlying truth.”
Another great still image from the adaptation of Elisabeth Moss as Kirby , supplied by Apple TV+