Crash
David Cronenberg, 1996, 100 min

Introduced by Hope Hopkinson

From the moment Howard Shore’s hypnotic score plays over the opening titles, it’s clear that there’s nothing quite like David Cronenberg’s Crash. After a detached film producer (James Spader) gets into a nasty car accident with an alluring doctor (Holly Hunter), he is drawn into an underground subculture of people with a kink for traffic collisions. Transfixed by the erotic, regenerative power of near-death experiences, Spader is reborn into a world of twisted metal, scarred flesh, and shattered glass, baptised by blood and other bodily fluids. There’s a mesmerising strangeness that permeates Crash, which is as titillating as it is unsettling, as clinical as it is intimate.

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Screening as part of Strange Encounters programme