Calling something a “slow burn” usually means emphasizing the “slow.” But “” proves that the real trick to a masterful slow burn is tapping into a story’s underlying heat and fanning it until the moment when it can finally go up in flames. Every frame crackles with a barely (and expertly) restrained tension — slow and steady, but threatening with every passing second to explode. Where so many other shows would seize every opportunity to boil over, “” simmers with astonishing patience — or at least it would be astonishing, if women didn’t know that feeling intimately.
“Sharp Objects” is a bruising depiction of the kind of barely, expertly restrained anger that many women know all too well. It reminds us at every turn that women would run through the streets screaming if they could — and that their inability to express as much can eats away at them, bit by bit.
Every woman on “Sharp Objects” runs on righteous fury, though they rarely acknowledge as much in words. Frayed journalist Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) spends most of her waking hours hiding her scars — both figurative and startlingly literal, scrawled across her body in her own hand. Camille’s teenage half-sister Amma (Eliza Scanlen) plays the role of dutiful daughter in a sundress when home, but once mom Adora’s (Patricia Clarkson) out of sight, she roller-skates through town sporting cutoff shorts and a wicked smirk. Adora wanders through their family mansion with a perpetual chip on her shoulder and drink in hand, which makes her far more like her wayward daughter than she’d ever care to admit. (Camille favors vodka out of a water bottle to Adora’s bourbon in a tumbler, but their hopes for oblivion are the same.)
“Sharp…
