The premise of writer-director Jason Buxton’s Sharp Corner provides immediate intrigue. What if a family discovered that the road bend out front of their new house is also a magnet for traffic accidents? That would be a horrible realization, right? Right, then the film goes one further: what if the husband and father of this family is Ben Foster? Put together, we feel like we’re in a slow-motion car crash, too.
Apologies if that reads as an insult to Foster. In truth, Sharp Corner works because his on-screen presence has become quite singular over the years. Foster has always been off-putting (again, sorry!), but as he’s aged deeper into “character actor” roles, he’s also been able to play more variations on this theme. For Buxton, Foster tones down the overt malice, hiding behind puffer vests and well-meaning smiles to play Josh, a forgettable office drone and family man living outside Halifax. As he and his wife Rachel (Cobie Smulders) settle in with their son Max (William Kosovic), however, the wheels (literally) start to come off their perfectly assembled little lives. One traumatic moment in their front yard, complete with a memorial to the deceased, leads to another, which leads to trouble at work for Josh, and tension at home, and so on. It’s darkly comic, particularly as Foster strains to appear normal, and revealing as well. Here is a type of modern-day masculinity and its response to threats, says Buxton. Now, brace yourselves.
Unlike its title, Sharp Corner‘s twists don’t exactly surprise, and the film winds along for a tad too long. To his credit, though, Buxton knows what he has with Foster and steers him towards one or another scene to accentuate that unsettling quality. As Jeff’s life comes apart, it’s easy to recoil at his clear-eyed obsessive mania, yet it’s possible to understand why he wants to head down this road, too. He’s going to save someone, even if it kills them.
