The Shards Review: Trashy, Depraved, and Hard to Resist
Ryan Murphy’s glossy adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ serial-killer thriller turns 1980s Los Angeles into a seductive nightmare.
It’s said that “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” but what if life is all play and no work? It turns out that the end result can be just as unhinged, if not more so, if the latest thriller from TV super-producer Ryan Murphy is anything to go by.
The Shards opens with a fictionalized version of American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis (Igby Rigney) watching an early screening of The Shining in 1980s Los Angeles. Bored with little to do, the affluent teen loses himself in fictional worlds, some of his own creation, and others helmed by directors like Stanley Kubrick.
It’s there, below the flickering light of the theater projector, that Bret first spots Robert Mallory (Homer Gere), “a guy so stunningly handsome I thought he was a movie star or model from GQ magazine.” Bret’s extremely detailed, often narcissistic narration goes on to talk of the primal urges this boy has aroused in him. “I had to be his friend. I had to own him.”
As you might expect from a Ryan Murphy show, things get dark real quick when we learn that Robert’s arrival coincides with “a season of horror,” one where none of Bret’s friends “make it out alive.”
Could this have something to do with the emergence of a new serial killer named the Trawler who’s been mutilating teenagers? And why did Robert just so happen to show up now, when he did?
From the sound of it, you’d be forgiven for assuming that The Shards is just another re-run of past Murphy shows, recycling all the delightfully grotesque tropes of his that have come before. And in many ways, you’d be right.
Shades of everything from Monster and Nip/Tuck to The Beauty and American Horror Story seep in here, but there’s something utterly mesmerizing about The Shards, which wields the same kind of allure that Robert has on Bret upon their first encounter.
At its best, the show feels like an elevated version of what Murphy has given us before, still outrageously camp yet more nuanced in its outlook. Perhaps this has something to do with the source material written by Ellis, even if he himself has had very little to do with the adaptation following Luca Guadagnino’s failed attempt to get it off the ground at HBO.
It’s easy to see why the man behind films like Challengers and Call Me By Your Name was drawn to this project. Every frame of The Shards luxuriates in a glossy ’80s cool that pulsates with effortless glamour.
These kids are quite literally too cool for school, and the actors who play them are obviously far too old as well, but this is the rare case where that doesn’t actually matter. In fact, it would feel odd if Bret and his friends were played by actual teens who look like teens. All their endless scheming and fucking and backstabbing would fall flat with a more authentic cast.
L.A. artifice is infused in every scene, deliberately so. When everything is fake, you end up questioning everything, and that includes the real motivations of each character and who the killer might actually be. Yet the vast majority of the cast still find ways to humanize each seemingly perfect part they play, digging under the designer clothes and makeup and copious amounts of blood for glimmers of truth that endear them to us more than you’d expect.
That’s not to say The Shards is a masterpiece of nuance. Bret’s opening monologue sets the tone with a somewhat absurd put-on accent that adds to the heightened tension, that notion you can’t trust anyone in this world. Props to Igby Rigney who found fame in Mike Flanagan’s Netflix fare such as The Midnight Club. His central role here is a star-making turn, as impressive as every curve of his abs and every curl of his perfectly coiffed hair.
It’s easy to forget there even is a killer at points (even if Bret never does). That’s how intoxicating every flirtation, every power move, becomes between him and his group of so-called friends. Rigney’s sexual tension with Gere is especially palpable, thick in the air between them, and the latter is pitch-perfect as an unstable rich kid who’s permanently walking on the edge of madness.
Hayes Warner and Kaia Gerber take what start out as thinly-drawn caricatures and end up with more substance than you imagine these rich teenage girls were given on paper. American Horror Story alum Wes Bentley is almost unrecognizable as a problematic producer whose trade is sleaze and seduction.
The standout is Evan Rachel Wood, absurdly brilliant as Debbie’s mom, and playing it as over-the-top as it gets. Watching her character imagine the Oscar she’ll never win reminded us that the Westworld star has long deserved one herself. Lines like “Was he in the bushes sucking some young guy’s dick?” sing like the very best Meryl Streep monologue in her hands.
Tony-winning producer Jordan Roth steals pretty much every scene he’s in as the evil, calculating queer your parents warned you about in the ’80s. The Shards isn’t afraid to get lurid in that sense, tapping into exploitation flicks of the past, even if it’s a shame that the show doesn’t commit more to horror.
Combine that with typical streaming bloat and an ending that raises more questions than answers, and you end up with an imperfect yet captivating show that’s the best Murphy has helmed in this vein for quite some time. Far from dull, this extremely cinematic spin on “the age of serial killers” shines throughout, as sharp and luxurious as it is trashy and depraved.
New episodes of The Shards (★★★★☆) drop weekly on FX and Hulu through Thursday, September 10. Visit hulu.com or fxnetworks.com.
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