Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sharp Objects’ On HBO, Where Amy Adams Investigates A Murder In Her Hometown

Because of the presence of star Amy Adams, viewers have been looking forward to Sharp Objects almost since the beginning of 2018. But it’s not just the multiple Oscar nominee that should get people interested in the show based on a novel by Gillian Flynn. Super-producer Marti Noxon and Big Little Lies and Wild director Jean-Marc Vallée are also on board. Can the trio make as big a splash as BLL made last year?

SHARP OBJECTS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A quick, blurry shot of a ceiling light with a fan spinning around it. The screen goes black, then we cut to some scenes in the sleepy downtown of Wind Gap, Missouri. We hear the faint sound of roller skates on pavement, and a girl with short hair comes into view.

The Gist: Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) is a newspaper reporter in St. Louis. She drinks, sleeps late, seems to shamble around her apartment and office in a perpetual depressed daze, and blasts Led Zeppelin from an old iPhone (or iPod?) with a shattered screen.

Her editor, Frank Curry (Miguel Sandoval), calls her into his office and assigns her a story about two young girls from her hometown of Wind Gap; one was found dead earlier in the year and another is currently missing. He wants the story to be examined from the perspective of someone who grew up there. Camille is skeptical; she considers herself “trash from old money” and doesn’t really want to go back there if she can help it. Frank thinks it’ll be a good story, and good for her to get back on her feet emotionally, so he orders her to go.

When she gets to her hometown, she finds that things there are pretty grim. The sheriff doesn’t want to cooperate, and the town’s just as big a bastion of polite racism and homophobia as it was when she left home. She encounters Det. Richard Willis (Chris Messina) who was called in from Kansas City to help with the investigation, and while he helps to a point, he’s not inclined to give a reporter any more information than necessary.

Reluctanly, Camille knows she needs to visit her mother Adora (Patricia Clarkson) and stepfather Alan (Henry Czerny). As soon as she arrives, Adora displays her usual narcissistic self, more concerned with appearances and how Camille’s return to town will reflect on her. Alan is just listening to his records. After questioning the dad of the girl who was killed earlier, then participating in a shocking discovery, she comes back to her childhood home to see that her half-sister Amma (Eliza Scanlen), who Adora wants to mold in her image, is also there. They both remember a sister who died before Amma was born.

Our Take: Sharp Objects is HBO’s big splashy summer miniseries for 2018, and any TV fan knows the names involved. Besides Adams and Clarkson, there’s Marti Noxon (UnREAL, Grey’s Anatomy, Mad Men, etc.) on board as the showrunner and Jean-Marc Vallée (Big Little Lies) directing all 8 episodes.

And, dammit, they’re going to tell the story at their own pace. It’s got Vallée’s dreamy, ethereal direction that seamlessly integrates the experiences of tomboyish young Camille with her sister into present Camille’s view of her hometown. Camille doesn’t make a ton of headway in the case she’s sent to cover, aside from the shocking discovery that happens as she talks to some rollerskating girls (including Amma, though she didn’t realize it). We see a lot of shots of Camille looking into the middle distance, downing airplane-sized bottles of booze, driving while drinking vodka from a Evian bottle, and losing herself in her Zeppelin playlist.

We really don’t care much about the actual case, though it’s a good throughline to propel the action of the show forward. How Camille deals with her past, being in a hometown that only holds bad memories, with a mother who drinks as much as she does and can’t look past her twitching eye, is at the heart of Sharp Objects. Though Adams and Clarkson do a fine job with their roles — it’s refreshing to see Adams playing such a misanthrope — the first episode is a pretty grim slog.

 

Sex and Skin: Camille masturbates in her hotel room during her first night in Wind Gap, though what she masturbates to is a memory of finding a boys’ clubhouse in the woods, laden with photos of people having sex.

Parting Shot: After her shocking first couple of days in Wind Gap, Camille gets into the bathtub next to her childhood room. She puts her earbuds on, blasts the Zep, puts her feet on the edge of the tub, drinks some vodka and contemplates. Electronic music gets increasingly louder until the screen goes black.

Sleeper Star: Elizabeth Perkins plays Jackie, a friend of Camille. Her family is decidedly not as polite and interested in appearances as Camille’s mother.

Most Pilot-y Line: We love Chris Messina, but he can’t modulate the New York tinge in his voice, and his character has to be written around that. When they run into each other at the local watering hole, Richard tells Camille he’s from “Kansas City… by way of a lot of other places.”

Our Call: Stream It, mainly because of Adams and Clarkson. We’re getting tired of depressed anti-heroes who drink and smoke their way through their shows, even if they’re played by Amy Adams. Let’s hope the show picks up the pace as Camille finds out more about the murders in Wind Gap.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Where to stream Sharp Objects