Obsession has always provided ripe fodder for thrillers. Just look at some of Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous features like Vertigo and Rear Window. That phenomenon has gripped Sharp Corner lead Josh McCall (Ben Foster), a seemingly ordinary father whose moved into a new home with wife Rachel (Cobie Smulders) and their young son. The day they arrive at this domicile, a tragedy occurs. A car crashes into a tree in their front yard. Suddenly, patches of fire are flickering inches from their front door. A flying tire has even broken into the living room. A sharp corner on the road next to this house is the reason for this horrific incident. If you’re going too fast or just not paying attention, this turn will get you.
Rachel is mortified after this accident. Understandably, she wants to leave immediately. Writer/director Jason Buxton's script (adapted a short story of the same name by Russell Wangersky), though, sees McCall going in the opposite direction. He doesn't want to leave the house. In fact, he'd rather sit in this place all day every day and wait for the next wreck to happen. McCall is trapped in a job he hates. His domestic life feels stale. Everything in his existence is routine. These wrecks could offer him a chance to be a hero, to become somebody. So McCall keeps the family in this house and his eyes glued to that sharp corner.
It won’t be long now. Soon, another car will crash. More lives will be in jeopardy. Then McCall can rise to the occasion and fulfil his potential.
Ben Foster is one of the supremely underrated actors of the last 20 years. Across movies as varied as The Messenger, Hell or High Water, and especially Leave No Trace, Foster's always fired on all cylinders. He's a rare 21st-century leading man with that John Cazale quality of immediately resonating as an ordinary human being. The way he crafts such range between characters (just look at how different his Lance Armstrong in The Program is from, say, his supporting Hostiles role) without lapsing into annoying “method acting” or caricatured nonsense is impressive.
Truth be told, it's weird that he isn’t even bigger in the modern cinema landscape. Why isn’t he a go-to regular in Soderbergh, Lanthimos, or del Toro films? How come Rami Malek and Viggo Mortensen got Best Actor nods at the 91st Academy Awards instead of Foster in Leave No Trace? No, I'm not bitter, why do you ask?
Before this review just turns into a Ben Foster fancast (as if it hadn’t already), let’s return to Sharp Corner. Wisely, Buxton opts to make this feature pretty much entirely the Ben Foster show. It's like how certain Nicolas Cage star vehicles are focused exclusively on that Moonstruck leading man’s machinations. Similarly, Sharp Corner is about letting Foster strut his stuff. That proves a fine recipe for a decent thriller. However, that does mean the feature’s inherently limited in how successful it can be. That’s no slam on Foster, though. Instead, it’s a reflection of how Sharp Corner is otherwise competent, but not especially noteworthy thriller cinema.
Buxton and cinematographer Guy Godfree's visual impulses for Sharp Corner, for instance, are pretty standard. Only a handful of Roma-esque moments where a slowly rotating unblinking camera bounces from one corner of the McCall house to another really demonstrate much personality. Supporting personalities in the story, including fleetingly seen friends of the McCall family or Rachel, don’t leave much of an impression. Most frustratingly, Sharp Corner’s ending is an abrupt and predictable creation. This home stretch could’ve easily been enhanced with just a few extra jolts of imaginatively eerie imagery.
Still, most folks will sit down with Sharp Corner to simply see Ben Foster portray a suburban dad with a sadistic savior complex. On that front, Corner certainly delivers. As Josh McCall, Foster exudes tremendous William H. Macy/Todd Alquist energy in this role. That Breaking Bad character especially comes out when McCall tries bonding with other people around these car accidents. A memorable chilling scene involves McCall attending the funeral of a man who died on that fateful sharp corner. Posing as a “golf friend” of the deceased, McCall tries conversing with the guy’s daughter in an eerie simulation of “caring” funeral attendees.
Empathy towards others is like a costume McCall takes on and off. Foster conveys that in this scene in such eerie subtle terms, including his depiction of McCall divulging the fabricated backstory between himself and the deceased. Like Todd Alquist, Josh McCall knows how human beings are supposed to behave but has no clue how to earnestly communicate those traits. Foster’s portrait of that personality is at once gripping and unnerving. Foster’s performance also remains fascinatingly buttoned-up throughout Sharp Corner’s runtime. There’s persistent calmness to his madness. That quality makes it easy to see why neighbors or colleagues would dismiss him as just a modern-day Ned Flanders. It also makes his flashes of deranged behavior (like his nonchalant insistence to a therapist that “nobody would have died” in a car accident if he’d been there to save the day) all the more terrifying.
Foster’s understated approach to McCall is tremendously involving. It also provides a great anchor to an indie thriller that, as a whole, isn’t nearly as distinctive as its leading man. A 110-minute runtime unfortunately exacerbates certain problems within Sharp Corner, including making its less imaginative visual impulses more apparent. Still, for thriller fans unaware of Foster’s filmography, Sharp Corner’s proficient qualities will make for an amiable (though not super memorable) watch. Plus, as first and foremost a showcase for Ben Foster, Sharp Corner is a nice reminder of this man’s tremendous talent. Now let’s get him anchoring a Wes Anderson or Lynne Ramsay movie stat.