Sharp Objects Episode 7
It’s not a melodrama or a crime thriller that lies at the heart of Sharp Objects after all. We’ve been walking further and further into the territory of gothic horror. Having said that, the horror didn’t swamp everything with its presence. Within the creepier aspects of this episode, there was the opportunity to find plenty of answers – things that have long eluded us when we all thought we were trying to track down a more traditionally televisual serial killer instead of a woman in white who floated like a spirit or reclined on the veranda with a cocktail. Everything came together to show Camille that the murderer had been in plain sight all along, not just in recent cases, but stretching back to Camille’s own childhood. Her sister had been the first victim of her own mother. Camille learned of the pink nail varnish the killer had applied to a victim’s fingernails, only for a number of shots to later linger on Adora’s pink fingernails as she ground down pills and poured her homemade “medicine” from a tall blue bottle. It was a beautifully handled visual clue that was paralleled by a wonderful scene between Camille and Jackie. Jackie’s façade of cheery drunkenness dropped away as she demanded Camille take pills and drink more and more of an enormous bloody Mary before she could talk of Adora’s behavior. Nobody can ever be drunk or stoned enough in Wind Gap, it seems, for the truth to come out. We’ve relived terrible things with Camille. We’ve been taken back to the experiences that have formed her, and have seen her attempts to survive them. The detective from out of town, Richard (Chris Messina), might have looked like an escape route to her at one point – can romance really save the day? Instead, Camille made an emotional connection with someone who could really claim to have been through a similar experience to her own, resulting in a deeply moving scene. The town outcast and prime suspect, John Keene, couldn’t get over the loss of his sister either. John and Camille’s searing, honest conversation led to a sexual encounter that enabled Camille to be naked in front of him. He read aloud the words she’d carved into her own skin, and there was an element of catharsis so tenderly invoked. Taylor John Smith’s performance as John was wonderfully judged. He managed to walk the finest of lines between desperation and desire in response to Amy Adam’s superbly evoked vulnerability. There have been times throughout Sharp Objects, usually within those group scenes, where I’ve wondered if there has been enough made of the murder investigation to hold our interest – well, now I know something that was building alongside all those small details and sharp objects along the way: the character study was the murder investigation. So much time was lovingly devoted to Adora and Amma, not as a counterpoint to the two murdered teenage girls, but as an integral part of that event. This was so stealthily done that it mirrors Adora’s act of slipping that poison to her children, but it leaves me wondering, with one episode to go, if there isn’t more sleight of hand to watch out for. We’re now in the position to blame Adora for everything, but what happened to the notion that only a man would have the strength to pull the teeth from the victims? And why would Adora deviate from her Munchausen by proxy to commit such brutal killings? There’s one episode left to get these questions answered. I’m really hoping that hour involves a confrontation between Camille and Adora that is every bit as good as the two-handed scenes that have preceded it, and brings us to a conclusion worthy of the gothic horror it turns out we’ve been watching all along. Read the latest Den of Geek SDCC 2018 Special Edition Magazine here!
