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)
Synopsis: After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims, and he begins to use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.