Sharp Objects

:

Season 1
  • Network: HBO
  • Series Premiere Date: Jul 8, 2018
User Score
7.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 227 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 157 out of 227
  2. Mixed: 25 out of 227
  3. Negative: 45 out of 227
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User Reviews

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  1. Xan_Ryil
    Aug 29, 2018
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. No matter how many series they built on the premise “Someone whose recovering from something has to return to home town after homicide” it still is interesting. “The Killing”, “Broad Church” and now “Sharp Objects” but the superiority of the later lies in it power lead which is “Amy Adams”.
    Amy has shown a variety of characters ranging from sweet Enchanted princess to strong linguistic teacher. But her role in Shape Objects is somehow very different than anything she has ever played. Aided by nonlinear story telling method which is flooded with flashbacks, very slowly and gradually we get a peek into the mind of “Camile”.
    As compared to his peers, director did not tend to end each episode at a cliffhanger rather let it go as a whole movie is divided into eight parts. With each episode, there is more focus on Camile getting adjusted into the town and how she deals with the ghosts of her past. Her job to cover for the murders becomes a sub plot in fact. But that brings us closer to her character.
    Now, there story becomes very slow and confusing. There is strong vibe who might have done what yet it keeps going. And show gives a final showdown at episode 7, after which last episode was just an excuse to make an episode. Experiments are always welcomes but not always they provide the required results.
    Show is great in each technical department especially performances, editing, cinematography and sound mixing it’s just it’s writing could be little more engaging.    … Expand
  2. wantedtolikebut
    Aug 14, 2018
    6
    I wanted this to be a shocking, dark thriller. I was looking forward to that. But, right from the start, it's so humorless, at least what I've seen so far. I keep trying to watch and then turning the show off. There's nothing especially original here. A ton of cliches. Yes, Amy Adams is good, but the character she's playing is so dour, so difficult to root for and so distinctlyI wanted this to be a shocking, dark thriller. I was looking forward to that. But, right from the start, it's so humorless, at least what I've seen so far. I keep trying to watch and then turning the show off. There's nothing especially original here. A ton of cliches. Yes, Amy Adams is good, but the character she's playing is so dour, so difficult to root for and so distinctly unentertaining. She's a difficult stranger plodding through life. It's a slog. Maybe it'll get better in the 2nd season? We'll see. Note: that's about as drab a show open as I've ever seen. anemic music. Aimless montage. Misses the southern gothic vibe completely, IMHO.… Expand
  3. Tony1984
    Jul 17, 2018
    5
    Clichés everywhere you look. In practically every single aspect with few exceptions. The flashbacks, the slow pace, the unspoken dirty small town secret, the ambitious FBI agent, alcohol, smoking, dysfunctional family, sex abuse. That said the actors are very good. All of them. It will all hang on the finale. If (as I fear) it's the obvious well trodden conclusion then this will beClichés everywhere you look. In practically every single aspect with few exceptions. The flashbacks, the slow pace, the unspoken dirty small town secret, the ambitious FBI agent, alcohol, smoking, dysfunctional family, sex abuse. That said the actors are very good. All of them. It will all hang on the finale. If (as I fear) it's the obvious well trodden conclusion then this will be forgettable...but if they venture off the reservation, who knows, this might be an award winner..??… Expand
  4. AliceofX
    Jun 15, 2019
    5
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I'm glad I had read the book before seeing this otherwise I would have been completely confused. It never explained Amma's motives, how a bunch of teenagers were able to commit two murders that left the cops baffled, how did she pull all those teeth out? So many things are left unanswered.… Expand
  5. WhiskeyStories
    Nov 27, 2018
    6
    The cast is great all around, it has a wonderful production, beautiful cinematography and themes that are rarely explored, but it's sooo unnecessarily SLOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW. Shapr Objects would have been a pretty great 2-3 parter, but 8 one hour long episodes is just crazy.
  6. Slackerking
    Sep 12, 2018
    4
    Incredible book. Incredible bore of a tv show. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
  7. Bertaut1
    Nov 13, 2020
    5
    Thematically interesting and brilliantly acted, but painfully slow and far too long

    Although Sharp Objects has been advertised as a murder-mystery, it's really interested not in who's behind a pair of murders in a Missouri town, but in how those murders affect a trio of women caught up in the investigation. Feminine in design rather than feminist, the show is a portrait of tainted    Thematically interesting and brilliantly acted, but painfully slow and far too long

    Although Sharp Objects has been advertised as a murder-mystery, it's really interested not in who's behind a pair of murders in a Missouri town, but in how those murders affect a trio of women caught up in the investigation. Feminine in design rather than feminist, the show is a portrait of tainted motherhood and corrupted sisterhood, and focuses on internecine inter-generational conflict, matrilineal dysfunction, and the difficulty of escaping past trauma. But whilst the acting is exceptional, and the show is well edited, it left me unengaged, uninterested, and bored.

    Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) is a barely-functioning alcoholic who works as a reporter in St. Louis, and who is sent to her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri to report on the murder of two young girls. Her mother, Adora (Patricia Clarkson), looks down on her with barely-concealed disappointment, and Camille is especially haunted by the memory of her younger sister Marian, who died when they were children. In the years since, Adora re-married and had another child, Amma (Eliza Scanlen), who fascinates Camille with her dual personality – dutiful daughter who plays with a doll's house, and roller-blading lollypop sucking teenage temptress.

    Based on the 2006 Gillian Flynn novel, Sharp Objects was written primarily by showrunner Marti Noxon and Flynn herself, and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, who was also lead editor. This is important insofar as the editing is the show's calling card, attempting to draw us into Camille's psyche via fleeting snippets of childhood memories. So, for example, adult Camille lies in bed and stares at a crack on the ceiling and when we cut back to the bed, she's a child looking at that same crack; adult Camille is shown opening a door, and child Camille enters a room. This inculcates us into Camille's mind, also hinting at her trauma, without ever being too revealing. Vallée overuses the technique, neutering it of its potency, but that notwithstanding, it's a good example of "show, don't tell", and of content generating form and form giving rise to content; the memories are tied to Camille's fragmented psychology, with the brief cuts acting like splinters in her mind.

    Thematically, the show focuses on female experience, specifically motherhood/daughterhood. Adora is a woefully bad mother who made little secret of the fact that she preferred Marian to Camille, telling her, "you can't get close. That's your father. And it's why I think I never loved you. You were born to it, that cold nature". Later she admits that what she wanted from Camille was the one thing Camille couldn't give – she wanted Camille to need her. The show also deals with how women respond to familial trauma, arguing that the pain experienced by abused women is just as valid as that experienced by abused men, the manifestations of trauma just as catastrophic, and the anger engendered just as self-destructive. We're used to seeing stories focused on damaged, hard-drinking male characters with dark backgrounds, but Sharp Objects is about the female equivalent. Indeed, in Wind Gap women are locked into the virgin/slut binary; it's a place where a woman's worth correlates with her femininity, her maternal instincts, and her acceptance of her place in androcentric societal structures.

    However, I just couldn't get into it. The biggest problem is the pace. I understand it's a character drama, not a plot-heavy murder-mystery, but as episode after episode ended flatly, I just stopped caring. Almost nothing happens. And that's not hyperbole, I mean it literally. Tied to this is that the show is far, far too long. The novel is 254 pages, but the show runs 385 minutes, with the characters not interesting enough to take up the slack. Elsewhere, the flashback editing is used so often that it loses its potency and starts to feel like Vallée is using it arbitrarily rather than in the service of character. Additionally, the show abounds in clichés – the alcoholic hard-as-nails journalist, the incompetent local police, the out of town detective to whom nobody listens, the gossiping women. Vallée also has a tendency to overuse certain images, thus robbing them of their effectiveness – Amma and her friends roller-blading around town, Amma playing silently with her dollhouse, shots of Camille filling a water bottle with vodka.

    There's a lot to admire in Sharp Objects, but precious little to like. Not exactly a work of post-#MeToo fempowerment, it certainly has a female-centric perspective, and its examination of issues usually associated with men is interesting. The performances are top-notch and the editing is decent if overused, but the show did little for me. I understand it's designed holistically rather than cumulatively, and I have no problem with that. But the pace is enervating and the characters just aren't interesting enough to fill the runtime.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

39
#39 Best TV Season of 2018
21
#21 Most Discussed TV Season of 2018
18
#18 Most Shared TV Season of 2018

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
78

Generally favorable reviews - based on 41 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 34 out of 41
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 41
  3. Negative: 0 out of 41
  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Richard Roeper
    Dec 14, 2018
    100
    Graced with some of the best performances Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson have ever given, directed with sure-handed and sometimes flamboyant style by Jean-Marc Vallee and dripping with honey-coated but often barbed dialogue, “Sharp Objects” is flat-out great television.
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  2. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Kaitlin Thomas
    Aug 17, 2018
    85
    With many men and women working hard to give off the appearance of a perfect existence while others still close their doors and turn a blind eye to the darkness that clings to the corners of Wind Gap, trauma and abuse have been allowed to continue in a cyclical pattern for years. It's unclear through seven episodes how and if that will ever change for the people of Wind Gap as a community, but perhaps by the end of the series Camille will at least have found the answers — and the strength — she needs to be able to finally put the horrors of her own life behind her.
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  3. Sioux City Journal
    Reviewed by: Bruce Miller
    Jul 30, 2018
    70
    The eight-episode series stretches its mystery to nearly unbearable lengths. ... It’s not as dense as Vallee’s “Big Little Lies,” but it does give its female cast meaty roles to savor. Clarkson gets the biggest slab, but Adams, Perkins, Scanlen and Lillis make the most of theirs. For them, it’s an acting banquet. Cut thinner, it might have been prime time prime.
    Read full review
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