Twist-Filled Film ‘Sharper’ Is Best Enjoyed If You Know Nothing About It—Here, a Spoiler-Free Review

Let's be honest: The best way to watch a psychological mystery flick is to go into it knowing nothing about it. Some of my best movie-watching experiences have come from being out of the loop—no trailers, no spoilers, nada. That tone shift halfway through Parasite? Wow! The twist in Barbarian? Can't be beat!

Of course, in the digital age, it's nearly impossible to avoid spoilers. When a new title premieres, you can't even open Twitter without a twist being thrown right before your eyes. (And of course, reading this review might feel contradictory to my point.)

But, don't worry because I'm not here to ruin Sharper for you. The new Apple TV+ film is one that is best enjoyed as a surprise. It feels like Catch Me If You Can meets Memento, and it's possibly the con artist movie to beat all other con artist movies. So, keep reading for my full, *spoiler-free* review.

How does one describe Sharper without giving too much away? Well, let's just start at the beginning. The drama opens with a meet-cute—Tom (Justice Smith) is a bookstore owner who falls in love with a PhD student named Sandra (Briana Middleton), who wanders into his store. However, when Sandra's brother comes knocking at her door saying he's in trouble, things take a dark turn, and it only gets more twisted from there.

In Sharper, we're introduced to a number of other characters, played by stars like Julianne Moore (Still Alice), Sebastian Stan (Pam & Tommy) and John Lithgow (The Old Man). But, much like Love Actually or Burn After Reading, it's revealed that these figures are connected in ways we could've never imagined...

Sharper begins with a definition of the titular word, which reads: “One who lives by their wits.” So, the movie is clearly about people outsmarting one another. But the title also works in describing the narrative of the film. Thanks to its nonlinear structure, the story of Sharper comes into sharper focus (see what they did there?) as the minutes roll by.

That's about all I'm going to reveal about the plot, but you'll thank me later. I went into this film knowing nothing, and I found myself going “OMG” and “wait, what?” quite a few times.

It's important to note that Sharper arrives as the latest addition in a long trend of tense mysteries. We could easily trace this back to Gone Girl, which saw extreme success and was quickly followed by similarly-paced films, like Girl on the Train and A Simple Favor. And more recently, the fad has taken a turn from the twisty thriller to a more light-hearted murdery mystery in the vein of Clue (let's call it the Knives Out-ification of Hollywood).

For this reason, the one problem with Sharper is that by the end, some of the twists might become predictable. But, this is only because the viewer is looking for them and we've seen some of these curveballs before. However, unless you're Benoit Blanc, you likely won't be able to put together all of the pieces in Sharper, which still allows it to be an exciting ride.

Sharper boasts a star-studded cast, an unpredictable timeline and a web of twists that will keep viewers guessing until the very end. Sure, we might've seen some of these tricks before, but if you let yourself get pulled into the story, you'll appreciate those razor-sharp surprises.

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