There are bad movies. There are weird movies. And then there’s Crash—David Cronenberg’s 1996 attempt to make auto collisions sexy, meaningful, and full of existential dread, but mostly just ending up with a pileup of confused stares, twisted metal, and enough leather seats to make a fetishist weep.
Based on J.G. Ballard’s novel of the same name, Crash is a film about people who get sexually aroused by car accidents. That’s not a metaphor. That’s the literal plot. These characters aren’t just turned on by danger—they climax at the sight of shattered windshields and bleeding airbag victims. If you’ve ever watched a Ford Taurus t-bone a streetlight and thought, “God, I wish someone would mount the wreckage,” congratulations: this movie is for you.
For everyone else, it’s like being trapped in a traffic safety video written by a horny philosophy major who just discovered nihilism and lube.
James Spader stars as James Ballard (yes, he shares a name with the author, subtlety be damned), a film producer whose life of bland wealth and unsatisfying sex takes a wild left turn after a head-on collision kills the other driver and lands him in the arms—well, the orthopedic scars—of Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter). Rather than call their insurance companies like normal people, they have sex in the hospital parking lot and bond over their shared arousal for car crashes. You know. As one does.
From there, things slide downhill faster than a greased wheelchair on a freeway ramp. Ballard is introduced to a secret society of accident fetishists, led by Vaughan (Elias Koteas), a greasy, scarred philosopher-mechanic who looks like a cross between Charles Manson and a Jiffy Lube assistant manager with an English degree. Vaughan is obsessed with the “reshaping of the human body by modern technology,” which in this context means watching people die in car accidents and then trying to hump the wreckage.
The group stages re-enactments of famous fatal crashes. They get off on seatbelt bruises and compound leg fractures. They rub each other’s surgical scars like erogenous zones. This isn’t satire. It’s not symbolic. It’s not even particularly thrilling. It’s just two hours of people having joyless, clinically lit sex next to dashboards, with the occasional burst of blood and broken glass thrown in like some twisted auto show.
The sex scenes—of which there are many—are about as erotic as an oil change. Characters grope and grind with the enthusiasm of sedated mannequins. James Spader has the same expression whether he’s getting rear-ended by a Lincoln or his wife. Deborah Kara Unger, as his blank-faced spouse Catherine, delivers her lines like she’s waiting for a Xanax to kick in. Their marriage is a graveyard of emotion, which might be intentional, but Cronenberg doesn’t so much explore this as smother it in chrome and abstract moaning.
Even by Cronenberg standards, this film is detached. And that’s saying something. Crash makes Dead Ringers feel like a romantic comedy. There’s no musical score to speak of—just ambient hums and mechanical whirrs. The dialogue is sparse, whispered, and monotone. No one smiles. No one laughs. It’s a movie with the emotional tone of a funeral held in an abandoned garage.
Cronenberg’s direction is slick but suffocating. Every frame is meticulously controlled, every performance eerily blank. It’s sterile, it’s clinical, and it’s endlessly repetitive. The first time someone licks a scar, it’s shocking. The fifth time, you’re checking your watch. The tenth time, you’re wondering if Cronenberg’s been locked in a mechanic’s bay too long inhaling tire fumes and unresolved grief.
And that’s the thing: there’s no arc here. No development. No catharsis. Just escalating acts of vehicular and sexual dysfunction. The characters don’t grow; they just drift from crash to crash like emotionally cauterized moths circling a flaming wreck. The film ends with another accident, another lifeless sex scene, and Spader mumbling, “Maybe the next one.” And all you can think is: God, I hope not.
Some will argue that Crash is provocative. That it’s a daring exploration of the way technology dehumanizes and eroticizes us. That it’s a bold adaptation of a transgressive novel. And maybe they’re right—on paper. But onscreen, Crash is a joyless, circular experience that mistakes numbness for depth and perversion for insight.
The film was controversial upon release. It was booed at Cannes. It was banned in parts of the UK. Roger Ebert gave it a mixed review and called it “repulsive but well-made.” And honestly, that’s about as glowing as it gets. It’s a film that seems to actively dare you to like it. And if you do? You might need to have a long conversation with your mechanic. Or your therapist.
Even the production design is exhausting. The whole movie is bathed in blues and grays, like someone shot it through a windshield during a Canadian winter. Everything looks cold, metallic, and faintly greasy. It’s like the inside of a rental car after a failed Tinder date and a spilled milkshake. Sexy? Not remotely. Compelling? Barely. Overindulgent? Absolutely.
Final Thoughts:
Crash is less a movie and more a prolonged tone poem for damaged people who whisper erotic sonnets to their fenders. Cronenberg, in trying to make a statement about modern alienation and the sexualization of destruction, ends up making a film that feels like being stuck in traffic behind two people grinding against an airbag. It’s slow, weirdly proud of itself, and smells faintly of gasoline and lost potential.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 fetishized fender benders.
Watch at your own risk—and definitely don’t operate heavy machinery afterward. The only thing that crashes harder than the cars in this movie is your hope that something meaningful might eventually happen.
