Sharp Objects

HBO | Release Date: July 8, 2018

8.1	USER SCORE Universal acclaim based on 53 Ratings

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chrisse989Oct 31, 2019

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I was unfortunately faire disappointed in this show. It had raving reviews in (Belgian) press coverage, so my expectations were probably a bit (too) high.
The show is definitely well acted, but it advances at a very slow rate. In between the second and the last but one episode, there isn't much happening (aside from drinking, looking moody, driving around). The conclusion didn't explain for me all relevant aspects of the murdered/missing girls, which is kind of puzzling if you got so much other "empty" episodes.… Expand

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Bertaut1Aug 13, 2019

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 howThematically 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

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