Sharp Objects Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Sharp Objects Blu-ray Movie Review

How do you dull the pain?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 17, 2018

If as is probably not the case Amy Adams was paid by the mile for working on Sharp Objects, she may very well be set for life, no matter what the vagaries of a show business career may or may not offer her down the line. That is of course said with tongue planted firmly in cheek, but it’s still undeniable that Adams, as troubled journalist Camille Preaker, spends a lot of time in her car, tooling about the environs of her (fictional) hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri in this miniseries which unites the source novelist of Gone Girl with the director of Big Little Lies. Preaker, who it is revealed suffers from both substance abuse and self harm issues, had gratefully exited the stifling conditions of Wind Gap, a town where “everybody knows your name” (and your business), for the “big city” of St. Louis, where she’s somewhat gainfully employed for a newspaper (remember those?). When Frank Curry (Miguel Sandoval), her editor, makes her aware that one little girl has been found murdered and another one has just gone missing in Camille’s birthplace, he sends her there on a mission to investigate, hoping she can give her reportage a personal spin, and perhaps also hoping that this assignment can help Camille exorcise whatever demons have been haunting her for so long. As is amply documented by a discomfiting and disjunctive series of weird flashbacks and visual non sequiturs that almost imply Camille is hallucinating, Curry’s hopes may be ill founded, since Camille is carrying a lot of baggage that evidently goes back to her childhood.

It’s rather telling that in the key art for Sharp Objects, what looks like a fairly standard if awfully serious family portrait of Camille, her harridan mother Adora Crellin (Patricia Clarkson), and her half sister Amma Crellin (Eliza Scanlon) actually reveals something akin to cracks running through the faces of all three women. And indeed a lot of Sharp Objects deals at least subtextually with the clash between appearance and reality, and what some feel is the need to “put on a happy face” in order to get along in society. Adora is in fact one of these people, inordinately concerned with things being done her way (in order to avoid any potential embarrassment, or, worse, scandal), and a lot of the friction that is depicted between Adora and Camille springs from Camille’s more headstrong tendencies, which tend to chafe at Adora’s quest for respectability. The fact that Camille, an obviously quite troubled woman, has returned “home” only to report about a horrifying set of murders only makes Adora more uncomfortable.

One of the delights of Big Little Lies was its structural artifice, where you knew someone had been killed, but you weren’t quite sure whom until the “big reveal” at the end of a rather wending (if scenic) road. There’s something at least a little similar going on in the episodes’ teleplays (variously by miniseries creator Marti Noxon, source novelist Gillian Flynn herself, and several others), where disruptive interstitial snippets tend to relay rather forcefully Camille’s fractured state of mind. Slowly but surely a series of personal misfortunes that Camille has suffered are documented, but often it’s left to the viewer to kind of deduce the full ramifications of what’s often shown only very brief vignettes (if they even amount to actual vignettes). Suffice it to say that Camille has had a rather rough road, despite being raised in an environment that certainly suggests at least the upper middle class, if not something even a bit more opulent.

Sharp Objects unfolds on two interlinked tracks, with what ultimately ends up being two murder investigations playing out against Camille’s own reporting and her interactions with her family. She actually hasn’t had much if any contact with her stepfather Alan (Henry Czerny), a guy addicted to listening to records on his stereo, or even more interestingly her stepsister Amma. While initial skirmishes quickly define the dysfunctions in the relationship between Camille and Adora, it actually seems that Camille and Amma are largely simpatico, this despite the fact that Adora makes no bones about her displeasure with all sorts of Camille’s life choices, and that Amma appears to be a much more docile child. As soon becomes evident, though, appearances can be deceiving.

There are a number of sidebars to even these two stories, including some romantic exploits on the part of Camille, as well as her disturbing tendencies toward self harm (the episodes come replete with a closing credit offering assistance to those with similar afflictions who need help). Performances are absolutely riveting throughout, with Adams and Clarkson really pulling out all the stops in detailing an actually scary mother daughter relationship. But the “mystery” here turns out to be exceedingly far fetched, to the point that the final couple of episodes almost played like a parody to me at times. There are not just red herrings galore, but a series of subterfuges that strain credulity to the breaking point as well as make a patently ridiculous connection that makes Camille’s “participation” in the whole story seem awfully contrived. Without posting any spoilers, I’ll just say that even the solution(s) offered toward the end of the miniseries left me with at least a few pressing questions, not the least of which has to do with where the second body was found.

Sharp Objects Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sharp Objects is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This was digitally captured with Arri Alexa cameras (according to the IMDb), and I presume things were finished at a 2K DI. While from an editing standpoint this miniseries is rather interesting, in terms of the sheer visuals on display it really can't compete with the coastal setting of Big Little Lies. That said, the "creation" of Wind Gap is quite winning, with some of the sun drenched footage (often seemingly taken from the car Camille is driving) really pops quite nicely, with a well saturated palette and with excellent fine detail levels on things like faded murals downtown or the ridges on some of the brick storefronts. Some of the rest of the material is a bit on the drab side by comparison, though it seems some of this is intentional, as in some of the flashbacks to a forested site that keeps showing up in Camille's memories. Some honey colored grading in the interiors of the family home tend to mask fine detail levels at times. One kind of interesting directorial conceit may be apparent from some of the screenshots — there are a lot of scenes shot with some kind of out of focus element in the foreground corner of the frame, with the "real" action taking place farther back. That may almost unavoidably tend to affect detail levels, since the literal and figurative focus of the scene is in the background.

Sharp Objects Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Much as with the video element, Sharp Objects' DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 gets the job done completely competently, if rarely really showily. Some of the outdoor material has good placement of ambient environmental sounds, and the source cues (virtually all of the underscore happens due to music being played within the context of the show) all resonate nicely through the surround channels, but otherwise this tends to be anchored pretty firmly front and center in any number of longer, talkier moments. Fidelity is fine throughout, with no problems whatsoever.

Sharp Objects Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This set's sole supplement is found on Disc Two of this two disc set:

• Creating Wind Gap (1080p; 5:10) is a brief but enjoyable piece looking at the depiction of the fictional small town at the center of the miniseries.

Sharp Objects Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sharp Objects is aces in the performance arena, and it has a number of unabashedly disturbing elements. But the miniseries kind of tipped over into slightly ridiculous Grand Guignol territory for me as it came to a close, something that tended to further disrupt an already pretty tenuous suspension of disbelief. Fans of the cast or the production crew are almost certain to enjoy this miniseries, though, whatever deficits some may find with parts of it. Technical merits are fine, and with caveats noted, Sharp Objects comes Recommended.