By John Corrado
In his sophomore feature Sharp Corner, Canadian writer-director Jason Buxton (Blackbird) presents an offbeat character study of a man who becomes obsessed with the car crashes happening on his front lawn.
A film about a car crash fixation could have gone in many different directions (like David Cronenberg’s Crash, one of the “sicko” classics of Canadian cinema). But the Halifax-shot Sharp Corner largely works on its own as a psychological portrait of a broken man who finds an inappropriate outlet to give his life a sense of purpose.
Ben Foster stars as Josh McCall, a family man working an office job to provide for his therapist wife Rachel (Cobie Smulders) and their six-year-old son Max (William Kosovic). They live a quiet, uneventful life, and have just moved into a new house outside the city.
But a freak accident happens on their first night in the new home that awakens something in Josh; a car loses control coming around the bend in the road leading to their house, and wraps itself around the tree in their front yard, killing the young driver on impact.
The whole family is left shaken by the incident. But Josh becomes unmoored by his proximity to the death, and begins to display elements of latent obsessive compulsive disorder and PTSD brought on by the traumatic experience of witnessing the accident. He becomes obsessed with the idea of needing to save the lives of any future drivers who might face the same fate, constantly waiting for the next vehicle to crash onto their lawn.
Buxton’s film, which was adapted from a short story by Russell Wangersky, finds nuance in the ways that it keeps us questioning if Josh’s newfound fixation on saving lives is born out of an actual altruistic desire to help, or his own desperate ego. Buxton also probes the increasing strain that is put on Josh’s relationship with his wife and son, as his focus on the car crashes becomes all-encompassing.
Josh gives off the impression of a man who had given up on his life before being consumed by this dark obsession. Foster nails the portrayal, walking that tightrope between eliciting sympathy and fear. This isn’t necessarily the type of part that requires a full-body transformation, but Foster embodies this character through every movement and inflection; his wimpish body language, that far off look in his eyes at the dinner table, a desperate, out-of-date moustache on his upper lip, his voice doing his best Will Forte impression. The actor disappears into the role.
It’s a fascinating performance that is almost entirely responsible for keeping us locked in to the film. On the periphery, the story does follow some of the predicted family drama tropes about a husband and father suffering a mid-life crisis, with Josh’s wife reacting in the expected ways. It’s one of the areas where Sharp Corner might fall slightly short. But the outlet provided to the main character feels fresh, and Buxton establishes a unique tone that shifts between being intriguing, unnerving, and darkly funny.
Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)
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