DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER
Alan Shapiro
PRODUCER
James G. Robinson
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Bruce Surtees
MUSIC
Graeme Revell
EDITOR
Ian Crafford
CAST
Cary Elwes (Nick Eliot)
Alicia Silverstone (Darian/Adrian)
Jennifer Rubin (Amy Maddik)
Kurtwood Smith (Cliff Forrester)
Amber Benson (Cheyenne)
Gwynyth Walsh (Liv Forrester)
Matthew Walker (Michael)
Deborah Hancock (Samantha)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 89m
U.S. release: April 2, 1993
Video availability: VHS - DVD
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In twenty years -- if anyone
cares by then -- some film scholar with nothing better to do
will dissect the movie-thriller trend of the early '90s: the
psycho-bitch genre. The scholar might build his or her thesis
around the idea that such movies are made, and are popular, because
of men's bizarre fear of women. But what, exactly, do men have
to fear from teenage girls? In The Crush, an unusually
stupid and synthetic thriller, a blossoming 14-year-old girl
joins the ranks of psycho-bitches. The movie spends most of its
time answering my question: Men apparently have a lot
to fear from teenage girls.
The hero, Nick Eliot (Cary Elwes, whose American accent comes
and goes), is a hot-shot journalist in his late twenties. Looking
for a place to stay, Nick rents a nice little guest house owned
by a rich couple with a pretty young daughter -- Darian* (Alicia Silverstone), who zeroes in on Nick
immediately. At first, Nick doesn't think much of Darian's coy
advances; she seems like a smart but lonely kid going through
a normal crush. Darian, however, turns out to be a wacko. Bright-eyed,
she sits in her room creating shrines to Nick. As soon as she
spots Nick with his attractive new friend Amy (Jennifer Rubin),
the camera moves in on Darian's eyeballs, and you wonder how
Amy will get it -- a runaway truck? A chainsaw? A flamethrower?
Writer-director Alan Shapiro, a TV veteran making his feature-film
debut, keeps the audience in Nick's corner by making Darian so
diabolical that the hapless Nick can't prove she's doing anything.
With supreme impunity, Darian scratches his car, sabotages his
computer disks, disables a mild-tempered, frightened girl who
tries to warn Nick. No one will believe Nick: That sweet little
girl couldn't do that. Eventually, after Nick has told
her she's pathetic and he wants nothing more to do with her,
she frames him for sexual assault. How? By picking one of his
used condoms out of the trash and placing his semen inside her.
Now, you could take offense at this ridiculous development, but
the movie leaves you too dumbstruck to respond in any logical
way, such as walking out.
The Crush might have worked if we felt anything for Darian
-- if we were allowed to see Nick through her eyes. But the movie
isn't interested in much else besides paranoia. Shapiro, who
says he based the script on his own experiences, has no sympathy
for Darian; this sad girl with mental problems is treated like
a monster, just like Glenn Close before her. (And the unskilled
Alicia Silverstone leans entirely too much on cold sneers and
portentous stares, as if she were Damien Thorn's little sister.)
At several points, the director also eroticizes Darian's ripe
14-year-old body (Silverstone is actually 15), letting the camera
loiter on her navel or her ass; suddenly, we're watching softcore
child pornography. The forbidden fruit between her legs leads
grown men to their doom. Camille Paglia must already be devoting
a chapter of her next book to Darian.
A film as inept as The Crush should at least have some
camp value, but I couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the scene
in which Darian unleashes a swarm of wasps on Nick's girlfriend.
Nor was I moved by the merry-go-round finale, in which the audience
applauded when Nick hauls off and punches Darian with such force
that she flies across the room (she's half his age and a foot
shorter!). We're cued to cheer as this disturbed kid gets her
lumps; The Crush is the movie that child abusers have
been waiting for.
*If you've made the mistake of seeing
this movie on television or home video, you may be thinking,
"Darian? Her name is Adrian, dummy." Well, yeah,
it is now. But in the version originally shown in theaters,
her name was indeed Darian. Apparently there is or was a real
Darian, upon whom the Alicia Silverstone character was based,
and her family got the studio to change the character's name
on the TV and home-video versions. So if you actually paid to
see this in a theater in 1993, you are among the lucky few to
have heard the character's original name before it got dubbed
over with "Adrian." Y'know, in case you cared
or anything.
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