Sharp Corner

The mild-mannered "Josh" (Ben Foster), his wife "Rachel" (Cobie Smulders) and their son "Max" (William Kosovic) have a brand new home and are looking forward to settling in when there is a car accident outside and a tyre comes a-bouncing through their window at a seriously inopportune moment! Needless to say they are a bit flustered and she thinks maybe they ought to move. Well when it happens again, you'd think that'd be a bit of a no-brainer but he is somehow captivated. Not by the accidents, but by the time it takes the emergency services to arrive, and so he decides to do some training to be able to help out. Of course, his wife and young son are perplexed by his increasingly odd behaviour, as is his boss, and so there's soon a lot on the line for the man. I enjoyed the start of this, and I thought this might be Foster's best performance, but after about half an hour it became a rather joyless exhibition of obsessiveness and selfishness topped off by a truly far-fetched, though sometimes darkly comedic, desire to do good. Smulders does fine, but only features sparingly - which is just as well for given her character is supposed to be a couples therapist, "Rachel" shows a complete lack of appreciation of her husband's trauma and of their son's needs that is ultimately annoyingly breathtaking. Sadly, the initially good idea just turns into a series of overly contrived bad decisions stitched together with an implausible series of incidents that rushed through some universally unlikeable and undercooked characterisations and left me wanting more - or less. Sorry.

I first heard about Sharp Corner in one of those "upcoming trailers" things you see on YouTube and it stood out as something unique, so I kept a note to watch it. The trailer was somewhat misleading, as there's not a whole lot of action to the movie, but it is an extremely tense psychological "thriller", a word people will debate. I was actually impressed! Ben Foster has gotten very good at playing weirdos.

There are a lot of moments of just someone standing around, looking around, sitting and thinking, but it never actually felt boring to me. There was always a building tension, the feeling that something might happen at any moment, because that's what the family was feeling. I was impressed with how well they did with a very minimal movie. I have a few complaints. The major standout was the CGI, which was only for a five second scene but it just didn't hold up to modern film standards. I also felt like the couple just...never felt like a couple. I also get annoyed by kids in movies, they rarely ever feel authentic, but that's a personal gripe.

Maybe I'm being a little generous, but I'm giving the movie an 8. It's much better than I was expecting.

This movie demands your patience and attention span. But the story is most effective in this way.

First off, the acting is excellent, and Ben Foster is captivating. I sensed what may happen, but his character adapted and changed his MO a few times.

This is about an unsung hero, who goes through crisis after crisis, but insists on solving the problem himself. Cobie Smuldrrs is excellent as well, and works well in her hyper-organized, perfectionist character.

The tension builds as Foster's character realizes his true calling. Consumed with a new occupation, battling mortal danger, he seeks to fight it head on.

This film is excellent with a plaintive soundtrack, well-rounded characters; and a narrative which belies exposition and resorts to thoughtful yet misguided strategies.

This is a very worthwhile film, but it requires your attention and curiosity.

Greetings again from the darkness. Purchasing a home is often called 'The American Dream.' For Josh and Rachel, it's even more special when their son, 6-year-old Max, refers to their new place as "a mansion". Sometimes (especially in movies) dreams turn into nightmares, and that's exactly what happens in this film from writer-director Jason Buxton (his first feature since his debut BLACKBIRD, 2012). Adapted from the short story by Russell Wangersky, this film is billed as a psychological thriller - which it is, yet it's also an enigmatic character study.

Ben Foster (HELL OR HIGH WATER, 2018) plays Josh. Only this isn't the Ben Foster we've come to expect. His usual high-intensity and simmering danger-on-edge is replaced by a mild-mannered man who is even a bit meek whether dealing with his wife or the new manager he once trained at work. Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill in the Marvel Universe) plays his wife Rachel, and their first night in the new house leads to one of the worst cases of coitus-interruptus in history. A car tire comes flying through the living room window just after the loud crash of a car hitting the tree in their front yard. The horrific wreck leaves a young man dead, and the family stunned.

As you might have guessed from the film's title, their new home is located on a dangerous curve. The only warning sign for drivers is mostly blocked by overgrown vegetation. Josh's reaction to the wreck amplifies his struggles at work, while also creating tension with Rachel. He wants to talk about it, and she wants to ignore it. A second wreck has Josh trying to comfort the driver. The wreck convinces Rachel it's time to move, while it simultaneously convinces Josh he could have saved the man's life. Clandestine CPR lessons follow, while family therapy exposes all we need to know.

Rather than a curve, Josh and Rachel come to a fork in the road ... and take different paths. While Josh becomes obsessed with waiting for the next wreck so he can save a life. Rachel simply wants to protect herself and her son, and avoid the obsessed Josh. He's a man who desperately wants to be a savior to strangers, when the best thing he could be is a father/husband. Foster's performance is unlike anything we have seen from him, and it can't help but make us feel uneasy. Director Buxton gives us an early sneak peek at the curve, but mostly we are confused as to why a speed bump or protective/reflective barrier hasn't been installed. Sometimes a movie leaves us feeling like it should have been more interesting, more entertaining, ... more something ... than it was. Foster keeps us watching, yet the whole thing feels a bit hollow.

Opens in select theaters and VOD on May 9, 2025.

On another platform I was looking for a comedy/thriller and that's what this movie was categorized as. Well it's not a comedy so I was disappointed. But on here it was categorized as a thriller, which again turned out to be wrong, so disappointment again. It's just a drama, and not even a good one. It's just too long before anything interesting happens and then it's just the end, which was too abrupt and again disappointing. The acting was okay so no real complaints about that but with decent actors alone you can't guarantee the movie will be good. For that you need an interesting story and this one was just not one of those.