It has been frustrating to keep up with the overbearing demands of Jean-Marc Vallée’s latest, but there’s a massive pay-off if you hang around till the end
The eighth and final episode of Sharp Objects aired earlier this week. Fraught with breathless tension and staggering drama, it was a finale so grim and powerful, it’s bound to leave a lasting impression. The episode was a stunning end to a pretty middling season, one that probably found itself weighed down by the humongous expectations it came with.
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée ( Dallas Buyers Club , Wild ) who knocked our socks right off with last year’s Big Little Lies , and based on Gillian Flynn’s debut novel, Sharp Objects was further bolstered by the involvement of Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson, actors so watchable, seeing them build and break down their characters over eight episodes instantly became a tantalising prospect.
In the first episode, we were taken right into the deep recesses of Wind Gap, made up of a scanty number of citizens, but many mysteries. We see the town and its many oddball characters through the eyes of journalist Camille Preaker (Adams), a former resident who has come back to investigate the murder of a teenage girl.
Much like Preaker, the audience feels unwelcome in this ghost town, even by Camille’s own mother, Adora (Clarkson), who is afraid her daughter’s free-spirited, stubborn ways will rub off on her youngest girl, Amma (Eliza Scanlen). There are the usual suspects: the sheriff (Bill Vickery), whose tardy investigation is sure to come up nought, and the spinster (Elizabeth Perkins), whose shunning of conventions makes her an anomaly in the traditional hamlet.
Camille is fighting her own demons. Her childhood memories, which involve the death of a younger sibling, have left a traumatic imprint on her mind; recollections that pierce every aspect of her being, and which are rekindled by her arrival to the place where the horrors lie. She is prone to self-harm and adept at covering her many physical scars. The resultant intimacy issues lead to Camille resisting the charms of a homicide detective Richard Willis (Chris Messina) — an outsider like herself. These are all fascinating characters, played by spectacular actors.
Vallée’s ability to shroud his stories in minute atmospheric details is not unknown, and he brings that penchant in all its glory here. Swift transitions between past and present to blend memories with reality, painstakingly lit frames, and the slightest use of background music engulf the viewer, making it a sensory treat. The ‘slow burn’ treatment, which has come to be synonymous with the best murder mysteries of the last decade, envelopes every aspect of the storytelling, and while that should have been a plus, there is such a thing as ‘too much treatment’, especially when it begins to gnaw at you a couple of episodes in.
That is not to say there’s an absence of plot; Sharp Objects is, in fact, stuffed with multiple interconnected strands, juggling several potent themes all at once. These threads begin to converge towards the end, albeit in a haphazard manner, and while there’s a massive payoff for the most stoic viewers, the overall telling seems driven by the compulsion to end on a winning note rather than an organic culmination of events.
All episodes of Sharp Objects are now streaming on Hotstar. This column helps you navigate online (and offline) television, a world of endless options.
