X
- 2018
- TV-MA
- HBO
- 2018
- TV-MA
- HBO
Summary St. Louis crime reporter Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) returns to her small Missouri hometown for a story about a murder of a young girl and the disappearance of another in this eight-part drama based on the novel by Gillian Flynn.
Created By: Marti Noxon
- 2018
- TV-MA
- HBO
- 2018
- TV-MA
- HBO
Sharp Objects
Season 1 Premiere: Jul 8, 2018
78
7.2
Where to Watch
Summary St. Louis crime reporter Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) returns to her small Missouri hometown for a story about a murder of a young girl and the disappearance of another in this eight-part drama based on the novel by Gillian Flynn.
Created By: Marti Noxon
Where to Watch
All Seasons
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 41 Critic Reviews
78
83% Positive
34 Reviews
34 Reviews
17% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 41 Critic Reviews
78
83% Positive
34 Reviews
34 Reviews
17% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
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.
HBO’s wonderfully addictive eight-episode murder mystery based on the Gillian Flynn novel, is predominantly about character; the murder mystery is there to drive the captivating psychological profiles of the main characters. ... Clarkson is remarkable in the role. ... Adams carries the limited series beautifully with a quiet but jagged intensity.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 284 User Ratings
7.2
72% Positive
205 Ratings
205 Ratings
11% Mixed
32 Ratings
32 Ratings
17% Negative
47 Ratings
47 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 284 User Ratings
7.2
72% Positive
205 Ratings
205 Ratings
11% Mixed
32 Ratings
32 Ratings
17% Negative
47 Ratings
47 Ratings
i can explain this show with two words: haunting and pain. i've watched it 6 months ago but even now, i remember it like it was yesterday. it haunts me in a beautiful way
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The intriguing aspect of Sharp Object is how it reveals how society’s expectations of women are full of contradictions. Be smart, but not smarter than your husband/boyfriend. Keep your feelings in check, but be everyone else’s emotional support. Be a good conversationalist, but don’t speak out of turn or talk too much. Appear virginal, but be always sexually available for your husband/boyfriend whenever he demands it. Dress conservatively, but in a way that shows off all your womanly curves. Wear enough makeup to give the illusion of natural beauty, but don’t wear too much or else you’ll look like a ****. Be skinny, but still have big, round, non-saggy boobs and a firm butt with no cellulite. Be able to consume 4,000+ calories worth of hamburgers, cheap beer, pizza, and barbecue while still maintaining a flat stomach. Exercise, but don’t gain any muscle. Care about your appearance, but don’t care too much or you’ll be vain. Be nice and friendly to everyone, but don’t spend more time with your friends than your husband/boyfriend and never have any male friends. Don’t be a doormat, but be submissive to your husband/boyfriend and your parents. Be unique, but only indulge in activities that are appropriate for women like baking, sewing, and gardening. Also, like all the same stuff your husband/boyfriend and parents like.
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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.
Sharp Objects may not be compulsively watchable, but it’s much better than the “Gone Girl” movie, with its own sweaty, sensual, mesmerizing atmosphere.
Sharp Objects views Camille's assignment, and confrontation with her past, as a laudable, necessary undertaking. Perhaps because it's framed through Camille's perspective, the series is unrelentingly pessimistic. Yet beneath its grimness, Sharp Objects ultimately testifies to the triumph of survival, no matter how ugly or desperate a form it takes.
[Sharp Objects] is frustratingly opaque, and it moves like molasses. It’s such a slow burn, it nearly fizzles out. ... At the very least, it’s still an artfully shot showcase for some fine acting, which isn’t the worst thing in the world. But considering the big names involved and the promising source material, it can’t help but feel like a letdown.
In the #MeToo era, HBO's Sharp Objects will inevitably be proclaimed a work of eloquent female empowerment. It isn't. It's slow, confusing, over-gothed and under-articulated. There's a good story squeaking from underneath all the messy baggage it carries, but it's probably easier to just go to Kmart for another suitcase rather than unpack this thing.
Written by Gillian Flynn, whose "Gone Girl" novel blew up into the best Davis Fincher movie since Fight Club, this has wonderfully realized characters. Amy Adams is excellent as an alcoholic reporter digging around in her past for a boss who I can not tell is either sadistic or helpful.
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[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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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 **** 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..
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OMG, really?! Getting through the first episode was nearly impossible! How can we (the audience) be expected to sit there and hang on when all our main character does is just mope around and drive her car while drinking copious amounts of alcohol?! Like, give us SOMETHING! There was just nothing! Nothing to keep me interested, and certainly nothing exciting enough to keep me invested in the entire series! Such a drag!
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Production Company:
- Crazyrose
- Fourth Born
- Blumhouse Television
- Tiny Pyro
- eOne Television
- Home Box Office (HBO)
- Blumhouse Productions
- Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office
Initial Release Date: Jul 8, 2018
Number of seasons: 1 Season
Rating: TV-MA
Awards
Golden Globes, USA
• 1 Win & 3 Nominations
Online Film & Television Association
• 1 Win & 14 Nominations
Gold Derby Awards
• 2 Wins & 8 Nominations
