After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.
The genius of the adaptation is that it feels faithful, when really it represents a complete overhaul that goes far beyond even the usual surgery required to translate a book of 224 cramped, crazed pages into a 100-minute feature film. […] Crash—a radically empty film reflecting radically empty times—is a work of ruthless excision and very few, very rare additions.
— Jessica Kiang (Criterion)
In the neo-Puritan context of MonicaGate, the only thing scarier to cultural gatekeepers than a movie that was too sexy was a movie filled with sex that wasn’t conventionally or marketably sexy at all. […] Crucially, Crash doesn’t ask us to identify with James, or even really adopt his point of view […] Instead, Cronenberg observes its characters’ impulses and convictions at a glancing, intimate distance and […] invites us to play chicken with our own sense of alienation or disgust rushing up to meet us.
— Adam Nayman (The Ringer)
