Sharp Objects gives viewers nightmares with horror twist in dark series finale

Fans of Sky Atlantic's Sharp Objects are reeling after a shocking twist was revealed in the dying moments of its series finale.

*Spoilers for Sharp Objects episode 8 to follow*

The eight-part miniseries – from Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, Buffy writer Marti Noxon and Big Little Lies director Jean-Marc Vallée – looked set to end on an uncharacteristically pleasant note, with our troubled hero on a path to some sort of stability, before the rug was pulled from under us in the dying moments.

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Amy Adams' Camille went into the finale having just learned that her mother Adora (Patricia Clarkson) was responsible for her sister's death when they were teenagers as a result of Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome (a mental illness which causes a parent to inflict illness upon a child), and that the same fate awaited her half-sister Amma (Eliza Scanlen) .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QvatznQX9g

Understanding that the best way to prove this was to allow her mother to do the same to her, she played a submissive version of herself and allowed her mother to administer her "medicine" (later revealed to be rat poison), causing her to become violently ill. Thankfully, after a couple of days of torturous sickness, she was rescued by her editor and father-figure Frank Curry (Miguel Sandoval), who led the police to the house, where they discovered a pair of bloody pliers which linked Adora to the death of the two teenage girls from the town who had been brutally murdered at the beginning of the series – and had their teeth pulled out.

A montage followed which showed Camille taking her sister to live with her in St Louis, miraculously shrugging off her booze addiction and finally filing a morally suspect piece of crime journalism. Things looked rather rosy, but a looming sense of dread hung over the final moments.

And, our fears were confirmed when Camille, surveying the creepily realistic doll's house version of their Wind Gap home that her sister had been constructing throughout the series, discovered that the ivory floor in the replica of their mother's bedroom was made out of human teeth. Actual. Human. Teeth.

This confirmed that it was Amma, not Adora, who had murdered her young pals – and, as if the revelation wasn't enough, a mid-credits sequence showed us how she did it, strangling them furiously with a look of sick determination as her friends held them down. Then, a final, post-credits scene showed Amma dressed all in white, luring her victims into the woods.

Fans on Twitter were shook. We got a couple of great teeth-related memes out of it:

https://twitter.com/ladybirdthefilm/status/1034206767423660095

https://twitter.com/c_heller/status/1034157747019898881

And many pointed out what we've slowly come to realise over the course of the series: that Sharp Objects was a gothic horror, not a murder-mystery, all along – citing those murderous glimpses in the credits.

https://twitter.com/slimyswampghost/status/1034170719901442048

https://twitter.com/bnd_nd/status/1034303451512156161

https://twitter.com/Bismark_BM/status/1034292271410237440

https://twitter.com/witchyhellbroth/status/1034283293636739072

Others praised young actress Eliza Scanlen – who plays Amma and has recently been cast as Beth in Greta Gerwig's Little Women – for a brilliant breakout performance. And there was plenty of acclaim for established greats Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson, too.

https://twitter.com/TWBCinema/status/1034277075174285313

https://twitter.com/darspringgg/status/1034272691027628032