Ben Foster on Modern Life Dread in Toronto Debut ’Sharp Corner’: ‘It’s the Failure of the Aspirational Lifestyle’

Amiable Josh seems on the surface to have the perfect life: accomplished wife (Cobie Smulders), son (William Kosovic) and a new house. Problem is, fatal car accidents happen with some frequency — and quite graphically — in Josh’s front yard, breaking apart his thin veneer of a life. Justin Buxton’s “Sharp Corner” stars Ben Foster as the almost anonymous Josh, the human equivalent of khakis and a white button-down shirt. Buxton imbues the film with tension, and as the likable Foster takes John into increasingly obsessive behavior, the film finds more horror movie elements in the banality of the normal. Foster is busy — he was in Venice to support John Swab’s “Chasing Ivory,” which unspooled in the Horizons Extra section — and calls “Chasing Ivory” “an exploration of import export of fentanyl and the cost of that.”

“Sharp Corner” world premieres Sept. 6 at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival. Neon Intl. is handling sales.

What’s your take on Josh?

Josh has gone through the paces of being a guy, a man who’s gone through his life as a modern middle class, ethical, honorable, neutered man with no sense of depth or introspection. And when this first accident happens at their new house — at least the way that Jason and I would talk about it — it’s like Josh just woke up, and he’s confronting mortality for the first time, and rather than look inside himself and question what it means to be a person or how we are with other people, are we just living our life through the optics of others? His decision is trying to progressively and excessively gain more control rather than process and experience life.

“Sharp Corner” unfolds like a horror film although Josh’s life would look fine on Instagram.

Yeah, it’s the failure of the aspirational lifestyle, right? We were just trying to poke holes in that Instagram-type life. It’s a film about being viewed in a particular way, but feeling nothing in your life other than low, creeping dread, right? It’s an existential nightmare.

How do you get into the head of this character?

I’m going to be very careful with that. I’ve met Josh. We’ve all met Josh, right? Josh is that guy in the pharmacy. Josh is at Costco. Josh is at Starbucks. Josh might have an office right around the corner. Josh is everywhere and incredibly dangerous when people feel powerless — or rather, I think a better word would be “disconnected” — and are living through kind of a stunted middle school assessment of what a life, a well lived life, means.

What do the car crashes mean to him?

He’s a guy, he’s a good guy, he’s a nice person, he’s a good husband. He loves his son and something deep inside, and I think we can all relate to that in moments in our life, when [we ask], “What am I doing?” And unfortunately, I don’t believe Josh has that. I just think he has the anxiety of it. And once this event happens again — rather than you know, you can call it therapy — he’s confronting mortality for the first time. But this event, it’s on his land, and now he’s going to do something about it.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a film called “Motor City,” which is a big swing, and I’m excited about it. It’s virtually a silent film and it takes place in the ’70s in Detroit. Alan Ritchson and Shailene Woodley. And it’s kind of like a rock opera. I’m on vampire hour stuff. If my eyes are foggy … it’s a nutty shoot. So, I’m excited about the swing there.