Final Rating: 4/5
Sharp Corner, directed by Jason Buxton, tells the story of a man driven by obsession and how an entire world can collapse onto him for that singular state of mind. Ben Foster plays Josh McCall, a married father who works a good job involving internet sales. He and his wife Rachel (Cobie Smulders) have recently bought their dream house in a rural area where they can raise their young son Max (William Kosovic).
On the very first night after moving in, things start to go wrong. Max is unhappy with his bedroom, despite it being bigger than his old one, but he can’t articulate what is wrong with it. After sending their son to bed, Josh and Rachel have a moment of intimacy. He’s excitedly dreaming of building a chip and putt in the backyard and a tire swing in the front yard, while she is doing some yoga to unwind and noting that she hasn’t seen her husband so content in a while. This leads to them having sex in the living room, trying to keep their excited voices down.
All of a sudden, the new owners and their house that sits on a corner of a bend in the road are irreparably changed. A car takes the turn too fast and rolls over onto their front lawn crashing into the tree and sending a tire through the families new home, narrowly missing Rachel and Josh. It was a car full of teens, with the driver being intoxicated and dying in the crash. While Rachel runs to check on and protect Max, Josh stands at his now destroyed window aghast, watching as the driver dies.
This sets in motion a downward spiral like none other. Josh’s seemingly laissez-faire attitude towards his job starts to turn into contempt, especially as he was passed over for a promotion to a colleague that he himself trained. He obsesses over the gory details of the teenager who died on his lawn. He argues constantly with his wife as he ignores the needs of his child. Things just get worse when a hit and run occurs on the same sharp corner killing a second person.
Josh believes that first responders take too long to get to their rural home and starts to believe that he himself stands a better chance of helping these victims. This is where his delusions of grandeur truly start up. Much like how people like Mark Whalberg believed that if he was on one of the hijacked 9/11 flights, he would have taken the terrorists down, or people suggesting they could single handedly stop mass shooters. Josh becomes infected with this toxic self belief that only he can be the hero to these car accident victims and protect his family.
Max, now terrified to go to sleep at night, pulls his hair out in chunks and gets tested for PTSD symptoms as Rachel begs her husband to sell their home that could very well kill them. Josh instead privately throws himself into CPR classes and watches gruesome YouTube videos of car crashes as he fantasizes at work how he would handle the next accident on his property. These fixations endanger his job as well.
What Sharp Corner illustrates is the thin line between sanity and insanity some people likely spend their whole lives threading. If these car accidents never occurred, would Josh have snapped, or would he be able to go on through life being allergic to ambition as his wife says, fine that he got passed over for a promotion taking a passing interest in his son’s life and being content in his marriage? Quite possibly.
Josh represents a certain breed of toxic masculinity that can easily fly under the radar. He is married to a therapist, so he is well aware of the terminology Rachel uses in arguments. He says the right things in regards to owning up to failings as a husband and father even when he misses the point of why Rachel or their couples counselor might be prodding him for insights. He disingenuously claims he will be more attentive at work, despite blaming his failures on a new underling coder.
The deeper Josh gets into the idea that only he can save other people, the worse his real life problems get. Everything around him craters as his narcissism skyrockets. Nothing can break him out of the cycle, so much so that he begins to stare incessantly out of his window, hoping for an accident to occur. The sound design in the film is subtly masterful. We frequently hear cars on the roadway, and each time we wonder if this vehicle will be the next one to crash, messing with the viewer’s psyche as they get in a similar headspace of Josh.
Ben Foster, always a committed performer, turns in a masterful performance of a man hell bent on self destruction. The opening scenes show him playful, dorky and romantic. His attraction and chemistry with Smulders is unmistakable, with their sex scene one of intense passion. As his madness overtakes all facets of his personality we see Foster turn Josh into a shell of himself. You see him engaging in the world, but in his eyes, he is somewhere else completely.
Smulders unfortunately doesn’t get much to work with as her loving wife turned forgotten partner is left adrift. Her scenes are often one note, just dealing with the frustrations towards her husband as she must decide what is best for her and Max’s safety. She doesn’t turn in a bad performance by any means, just one that is limited by the script, which is a shame. Foster often overpowers any scene as he commands the screen like few other modern actors have the ability to do.
Despite some predictable moments, the film ends with an unforgettable final act by Josh that would place him in familiar company like Jake Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom from Nightcrawler. This is a film that will easily get under your skin, even if it drags at some points all thanks to Ben Foster with his descent that will have you refusing to look away, like a flaming car wreck.
Thank you to Elevation Pictures for the screener.
