A college freshman’s bid to lose her virginity before the school year ends comes down to being invited to the Crush Party in CRSHD.

The Crush Party is the big event at an Ohio liberal arts college as the year winds down.  All that Izzy Alden (Isabelle Barbier) and best friends Anuka Deshpanda (Deeksha Ketkar) and Fiona Newman (Sadie Scott) want to do is go to this party.  The price of admission comes with a catch.  Your crush gets an invite while you get an invite if somebody is also crushing on you.  It can honestly be very confusing.  Meanwhile, Fiona and Anuka help Izzy out to reach this goal.  What is the cost if things go south?  Would it all be worth it?  Maybe, maybe not.

The idea of a high school or college student losing their virginity by a goal date isn’t new to film.  No, we’ve seen this before, most prominently featured in American Pie.  If you don’t lose your virginity, films make it appear that everything would have been for nothing.  I am already 15 years removed from my college freshman year so the films coming before are the ones that I resonate with the most.  Maybe it’s a generational thing?  Anyway, what writer-director Emily Cohn seeks to do here is make such a film for the digital age.  Cohn steps away from some of the typical styles that we’re used to seeing on screen.  She does so by transplanting our characters into the world of social media.  The lighting shows through this different approach.

There are certainly times in the film where I question the storytelling choices.  At a the invite-only crush party, there’s a moment that comes some 51ish minutes into the film with two young men kissing.  Not that there’s anything wrong with two men being in love.  The thing is, neither of them are gay.  The film quickly cuts to another scene–which begs the question, what exactly is the purpose of the previous scene?

At some point in watching the film, I came to the quick conclusion that it is most definitely not made for me.  This isn’t to say that there is an audience out there somewhere because there probably is.  A younger millennial audience may appreciate this film more than me.  I personally was not a fan.

CRSHD may appeal to younger viewers more so than it will with older audiences.

DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER:  Emily Cohn
CAST:  Isabelle Barbier, Deeksha Ketkar, Sadie Scott, Will Janowitz, L.H. González, Abdul Seidu

CRSHD held its world premiere during the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival in the Viewpoints program. Grade: 3/5