Cast

Written And Directed By: Jason Buxton

Release Year: 2025

There Is no Known Audio Description For This Title

What Is it?: Location, location, location. The most important thing in realty. A man (Foster) fails to do his due diligence and moves his family into a new home that is positioned at a particularly treacherous part of the road. As the crashes pile up, he becomes increasingly more committed to the chaos at his property, sacrificing his familial duties, and his work. Will this sharp corner be the final turn in his own life?

What Works: Initially premiering at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival, this drama about obsession is anchored by a performance by Ben foster.I’m a fan of his, and I think unabashedly he’s due an Oscar nomination. He has been a little like Paul Dano, where he keeps starring opposite performers who get the nomination, but he misses out. Sharp Corner won’t change that, but it does build one more solid performance on his roster.

What Doesn’t Work: The lack of audio description in a film about car crashes really puts a damper on the film, but Cobie Smulders is just wasted in this role.Smulders has nothing to do, and the film is so focused on his obsession, but not so much on Smulders, and the exhaustion she must feel, or even the young boy who plays his son, who has even less screentime.

It isn’t quite as strong as other films about unhealthy obsessions, like Magazine dreams from earlier this year, or the even better Nightcrawler, but it is possible that if it had audio description, I’d swing positive. It just is that the film centers around these crashes I can’t see, and I’m not given any reference to.

Why You Might Like it: You can see, so the car accidents would make sense. Also, you love psychological thrillers.

Why You Might Not Like it: Without audio description, it really is a deal breaker, even if I’m pulling for Ben foster. it also could have used another pass on the script to give Smulders something to do.

Final Thoughts: While the work Ben Foster does is still commendable, ultimately this film about obsession gets muddled when it can’t bother to contextualize a key visual element through audio description.

Rotten: 4.6/10