SHARP CORNER - Review

Josh (Ben Foster) and his wife Rachel (Cobie Smulders) are moving into their new home. They both are happy to have gotten a deal on the place, even their son Max (William Kosovic) is excited once he sees how big the house is and the lot that it sits on.

The first night they are in the house, Josh and Rachel decide to christen their new place. As they are in the middle of the act, we hear tires screeching and then a tire comes flying through the front window of the home. The vehicle took the sharp corner adjacent to the home too quickly and wound up spinning out and crashing in Josh and Rachel's front yard.

Nobody in the home is hurt but there is a fatality in the vehicle outside. While Rachel is understandably rattled as a result, Josh becomes obsessed with the victim. He follows the story of the accident online, reads the obituary, and talks of the victim like he knew him. Determined to try and avoid the same thing happening on their front lawn again, Josh decides to trim the tree limbs that are obstructing the street sign that warns of a sharp corner.

His obsession grows and he starts just watching traffic go by while trying to pinpoint the exact trouble spot in the turn. Not too long after the first fatal accident, it happens again. Same thing, vehicle takes the corner too fast and winds up crashing onto Josh's front lawn. This time he rushes out and tries to offer assistance but is too late and the driver of the vehicle passes away while locking eyes with Josh just as paramedics arrive on the scene.

That isn't the only difference between this crash and the first one. No, this time around Josh swiped the phone from the driver and took it upon himself to try and learn as much as possible about the victim. If that wasn't disturbing enough, he shows up to the man's funeral and passes himself off as a golf buddy to the man's mourning daughter.

Rachel is tired of the constant crashes and the wormhole they seem to have sucked her husband into. Not only are the crashes impacting his home life, his obsession with them are about to cost Josh his job.

Unfortunately, Sharp Corner is an interesting concept that would have benefited from a more capable writer.

Josh is a detached individual from the first seconds we meet him. Long before the first accident he comes across as cold and distant in conversation with his wife and son. Additionally, Rachel is unlikeable from the beginning but with no reasoning behind it. We never get some clever reveal that explains why she's that way, she just is and we're supposed to accept it. The issues with the writing go beyond just the attitudes of the main characters, the interactions they have don't feel natural either. Whether it is Josh and Rachel having a conversation or a table full of their friends all talking over dinner, the dialogue is clunky. Nobody in the movie manages to speak in a natural way.

At 1 hour and 50 minutes in length, Sharp Corner is simply too long. There is not enough meat on the bones of this script to keep the viewer engaged for that long. Even if this were edited down to the 80-90 minute range, it still would be too long. The sweet spot for Sharp Corner would have been as a 30-45 minute short film.

But it wasn't all bad. In fact, Ben Foster singlehandedly does everything he can to try and save this. While the relationships and motives are a bit wonky from the start, when the spiral into obsession begins is when Foster starts to shine. For whatever reason, Ben Foster plays unhinged incredibly well. Doesn't matter if it is a sinister unhinged or, like here, a more subdued type of slow decent into unhinged behaviors.

Sharp Corner was released in theaters in Canada on May 9th and is available in the States via VOD. That being said, wait for it to pop-up on a streaming service you subscribe to before giving it a watch.

🍿 SCORE = 65 / 100