Sharp Objects (2018) * *

Directed by:  Jean Marc Vallee

Starring:  Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, Elizabeth Perkins, Eliza Scanlen, Matt Craven, Henry Czerny

I waited until I watched all eight episodes to review this HBO limited series, but my chief complaint was apparent at about episode three.   The series runs way too long.    It becomes a drag to listen to the endless conversations in which names and events are thrown around as if we know what they're talking about.    I grew weary of the constant flashbacks to the main character's haunted past which we won't be able to make sense of until it is tidied up at the end.     The show at least sticks to the formula of a whodunit and doesn't give us a killer we didn't see before (a la the first season of True Detective), but Sharp Objects has the same rhythms and gloomy atmosphere of True Detective, which means it moves as quickly as a slug on a sidewalk in January.

The setup is intriguing.   Reporter Camille Preaker (Adams) is assigned a double homicide story in her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri.    Camille is an alcoholic whose stints in rehab didn't take.   She fills up water bottles full of straight vodka and one wonders how she is able to function.    Camille is not thrilled at the homecoming, since her strained relationship with her domineering mother Adora (Clarkson) is obvious from their first meeting.    Adora's name belies her personality.   She is cold to Camille while doting on her half-sister Amma (Scanlen), who seems to know how to play her mother like a fiddle.   

Camille's past haunts her wherever she goes.   She sees visions of her late sister, who died mysteriously, and other traumas which just won't go away.    Camille's exposure to her hometown and her family doesn't help her drinking any, and the case itself is brutal to report on.    Suspects' names are cast about and the town has its suspicions of who might have committed the heinous crimes.    Sheriff Vickery (Craven) brings in a big city detective named Richard Willis (Messina), who grows to despise Wind Gap as much as Camille does, but for different reasons.    Camille and Richard become tentative allies and inevitably lovers, mostly because they have their hatred of Wind Gap as a common bond.

Camille, we learn, has acted out in other ways to her childhood trauma.   The scars all over her body, some in the form of words, were caused by Camille cutting herself in order to cause physical pain.   The physical pain may stop her from feeling the psychological pain, but her scars make her wear turtlenecks and long dark pants even in mid-summer so no part of her body is revealed.    In one of the better scenes, Camille undresses in front of a teen who is the leading suspect and for the first time experiences pleasure from a worshipful lover.    But, even that ends badly. 

Sharp Objects sets up nicely in the first episode, before meandering into too many unnecessary subplots and conversations which drone on.    This is an eight-part one hour series which could've easily been told in four parts.    The flashbacks become repetitive, and we have to endure them since we can't make sense of them anyway.   The story is told in the same manner a party guest would tell one assuming incorrectly that we know who the participants are.    We nod politely, but we haven't a clue what they're saying.

The actors, especially Adams and Clarkson, give strong enough performances to make us care as much as possible about them.    We respond to Adams' vulnerability as much as Clarkson's cruelty in equal measure, but I wished the rest of the story was equal to their talents.