Jessica Biel stars in ‘The Sinner’
The presence of Jessica Biel, who is not often on television, is the main point of interest in “The Sinner,” a twisty new thriller that premiered Wednesday on USA. Bill Pullman, who is even more of a movie star — in generally better reviewed movies — is in it too, rasping and squinting in his special way.
But Biel, who is also an executive producer of the series, is the reason to watch. She gives a committed performance, measured even in its required extremes, one that the film’s doggedly arty execution and relentless creepiness do not keep from registering as genuine.
Adapted in eight episodes by Derek Simonds from a 1999 novel by German crime writer Petra Ham-mesfahr, it focuses on Cora Tannetti (Biel), a seemingly ordinary woman with a husband (Christopher Abbott), small child and interfering motherin-law, managing her father-inlaw’s heating business in a leafy small town in upstate New York. Before too many minutes have elapsed, we are given hints that something is not quite right with Cora; even her cleanliness is next to ominous.
And then, all of a sudden, in front of a pack of witnesses, she commits what network press materials circumspectly call “a startling act of violence.” (It certainly startled me.) Cora’s seeming lack of motive and refusal or inability to defend herself, nags at Det. Harry Ambrose (Pullman), who likes there to be reasons for things; even as Cora hurtles toward a guilty plea, he presses her for information. This is a why-dunit.
“Me coming here is not going to stop until I hear something out of you that makes sense,” he tells her. (“Here” is jail.) But there are holes in Cora’s memory, papered over with invention.
Ambrose comes with issues of his own; a shaky marriage, some psycho-sexual baggage that appears to have been added just to give Pullman something to act beyond going around asking questions like a bearded Joe Friday. He has been given an interest in flora, as well — he notices that the pine trees across the lake are blighted and that the rubber plant in the corner isn’t getting enough light, and drops a line about “an ecosystem out of balance,” in which I suppose you are free to read deeper meanings. But it feels stapled onto the character.
There are flashbacks and visions aplenty as Cora remembers or reconstructs her past. Much of what feeds her trauma feels a little too familiar. A childhood deformed by religious fanaticism? Many viewers will have pronounced “PTSD” before anyone in the series does. And will that weird patterned image they keep showing us turn out to be wallpaper in some room where something happened? A lifetime of movies says it will.
But who knows? Only the first three hours were available for review. With five hours to go, there could be a lot of revision ahead.