HBO’s Sharp Objects Is Kind of Dull: New at Reason

In the #MeToo era, HBO’s Sharp Objects will inevitably be proclaimed a work of eloquent female empowerment. It isn’t. It’s slow, confusing, over-gothed and under-articulated. There’s a good story squeaking from underneath all the messy baggage it carries, but it’s probably easier to just go to Kmart for another suitcase rather than unpack this thing.

HBO’s miniseries—at eight episodes, probably too long by a quarter—is based on the first novel by creepy-crime writer Gillian Flynn, written some years before Dark Places and Gone Girl made her a star. Though not quite so fluid as her later two books, Sharp Objects shares their disquieting sense that behind every white picket fence there lurks a psychopathic axe murderer about to hack his way out. Television critic Glenn Garvin explains how the adaptation fails to capture Flynn’s work.

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