Can We Get out of Here Alive? Sharp Objects’ Horror Hothouse

ALICE: Does it get better with your family? Maybe when I’m older, like you?

CAMILLE: No. Not really.

ALICE: So what do you do?

CAMILLE: You survive.

Do you, though? Do you survive? This seems to be one of the central questions in the hypnotic Sharp Objects, the Marti Noxon-created HBO show based on the eponymous novel by Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (Big Little Lies). In the world of Sharp Objects, rebellious girls keep dying and a psychologically shattered protagonist is stuck in a nightmarish sort of living death brought on by acute PTSD. Languid terror suffuses the show and although the dangers seem legion, their specifics are also hallucinogenically unclear (I have not yet read Flynn’s book).

I say that the show asks “can we get out of here alive,” but in truth I’m halfway through the series and as yet unsure exactly what that “here” might be. “Here” could be Wind Gap, Missouri, the tiny hometown to which our antihero Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) is forced to return – ostensibly on journalistic assignment to cover a horrifically burgeoning serial killer situation. And as the quoted dialogue above attests, “here” is certainly also family – presented in Sharp Objects as a viper’s den of traumatic compulsions and abuse, barely concealed by a gossamer dusting of saccharine Southern decorum.

A tour-de-force performance by Amy Adams anchors the entire show; Camille’s flinty intelligence and stubbornly aggressive sense of self-destruction provide a perversely stable foundation for what is otherwise an unnervingly fluid mise-en-scène. Camille’s vertiginous PTSD, from traumas that we see only glimpses of, keeps her suspended in a private world of pain; as viewers we get a chaotic and partial view of her inner world through brief snippets of the image-streams that seem to run constantly, undifferentiated, through Camille’s mind.

Consumed by demons and surrounded by ghosts (particularly the ghosts of her beloved sister Marian, who died mysteriously, and her psych-ward roommate and rare true friend, who died by her own hand), Camille resides in a hell that both is and is not of her own making. Her agonized existence may be infernally monotonous in some respects (she spends most of her time driving, listening to music, and getting blackout drunk) but her identity is compellingly rich and varied.

A former town princess, cheerleader, etc., and now a promising but immature writer, Camille is also a Leaving Las Vegas level alcoholic and suffers from a form of self-harm that doctors call NSSI disorder – non-suicidal self-injury disorder. In common parlance, Camille is a cutter. In a surprisingly subtle nod to the devastations of intergenerational trauma, Camille seems to have amplified the afflictions of her narcissistic queen-bee mother Adora (expertly portrayed by the inimitable Patricia Clarkson): Adora’s trichotillomania (she pulls out her eyelashes) and moderately functional alcoholism become, in Camille, shockingly severe self-harm and alcohol abuse.

While Camille’s younger half-sister Amma (Eliza Scanlen) seems locked in some secret domestic drama with their mother Adora, as does husband Alan (Henry Czerny), Camille exists by and for herself. Extradiegetically speaking, female characters are rarely permitted such a luxury. Camille’s independence is intradiegetically significant too; Camille is broken, yes, but she is also steely – and she escaped not only the pettiness and brutality of Wind Gap, but also a murderously miserable home environment. By contrast her “almost perfect” sister Marian was less fortunate, and my sense is that this distinction will become more and more meaningful as the series moves on. In fact the only other woman in town who seems to share Camille’s level of independence is Jackie O’Neele (Elizabeth Perkins), who – with her mink lashes, sarcastic drawl, and preference for “sweet tea with a kick” – is a rare delight.

Sharp Objects walks a razor-fine line: it shows us familiar, almost cliché, tropes of detectives, dead girls, serial killers; it also paints a picture of a town in which, overall, the women actually seem more awful than the men; moreover the female protagonist’s pain is graphic and bloody and sexual and put very acutely and uncomfortably on display.

Any of these elements could potentially have been very problematic. But Sharp Object’s razor edge cuts for a reason: female cruelty blossoms out of an omnipresent backdrop of male sexism, violence, and homophobia; the serial killer format and dead-girl obsession seem to have been mobilized self-reflexively, to tell a story that will help explain how our most harmful obsessions are created; and Camille’s torturous existence – though highly triggering – is not a reckless adventure in exploitation entertainment.

Instead, Sharp Objects uses these near-clichés, plus a claustrophobic dollhouse aesthetic with florid flourishes of surreality, to examine the realest question of all, one which I think most of us ask ourselves again and again throughout our lives: how many sharp objects can I endure? As Sharp Objects makes vividly clear in its first four (out of eight) episodes, the sharp objects others use to hurt us and those with which we hurt ourselves are inextricably intertwined – caught up in a dangerous dance where the footwork repeats endlessly yet the finale is still unclear.

Sharp Objects airs Sundays on HBO.