The Crash (2026) – Review by Andrea Carnevali

The Crash ⭐️⭐️

The number one documentary on Netflix right now turns out to be one of the most predictable and unsatisfying true-crime films in recent memory: it gives you the grim facts, then sits there waiting for you to do the emotional work.

Lured in by the fact that this was the number one documentary on Netflix at the moment, I have to say I found it extremely bland and unsatisfactory.

The Crash is the story of a car accident where two people lost their lives and one person, the driver, was left badly injured. As the film unfolds, you slowly find out that what looked like an accident might actually be a premeditated murder. And before you start screaming ‘Hey, spoiler alert!’, let me tell you that the pre-title sequence right at the beginning spoils most of the film anyway: they must have known that if they didn’t have a sequence like that, nobody would have been able to get past the first 10 minutes.

Because, let’s be honest, not only is this the most predictable documentary I’ve seen in ages, but very little actually happens. A story like this hardly deserved a whole 90-minute documentary, unless the filmmakers were going to use the material to dig into something larger: parenthood, social media, coercive relationships, grief, the psychology of obsession, even the legal machinery around intent versus accident. There were so many directions this could have gone in.

But no. No such luck here.

That’s what makes the whole thing feel so unsatisfying: it doesn’t really become a mystery, because the shape of the mystery is obvious from the start; and it doesn’t really become a character study either, because it never goes far enough into anyone’s head to feel meaningful. The result is a documentary that seems to think the shock of the case is enough to carry it, when in fact the shock is precisely what wears off first.

While I appreciated the unhurried editing, which gave the story room to breathe, letting the silences, pauses, and small reactions do a lot of the work to try to land some of the emotional beats, there was just not enough to get me affected (and remember, I’m the one who cries at commercials!).

What you end up with is one of those Netflix true-crime films that feels more like a placeholder than a piece of investigation. It gives you the outline, the headlines, the grim facts… and then just sits there, waiting for the viewer to do the emotional work for it. But there’s no real texture, no proper tension, and no deeper angle that justifies the running time.

It’s neither rigorous nor forensic, nor revealing. It’s bleak, strangely detached, and, however much it tries, it’s rather cold and bloodless.

Possibly not a problem with the filmmaking itself, but more with the whole commission of the project in the first place.

I only lasted to the end because I knew it would not have been fair to write a review of something I hadn’t fully watched. But because I suffered through it, it doesn’t mean you have to.

Streaming on Netflix.

Andrea Carnevali is a Bafta winning film maker who lives in Chiswick, and a co-creator of the Chiswick In Film festival.