The ’90s Thriller That Made Everyone Squirm—What Really Happened to The Crush

Here is a very 90s sentence: a thriller about a 30-year-old writer fending off a 14-year-old girl, no actual sex scenes, still somehow controversial, launches Alicia Silverstone, and maybe kneecaps the director because he used the real girl’s name and got sued. That’s The Crush. Let’s talk about how this messy little time capsule happened.

The real-life spark that probably should have stayed a dinner-party story

Before his feature debut, writer-director Alan Shapiro was making Disney TV fare like The Christmas Star and he’d directed an episode of The Outsiders series. His wife pitched him on mining an old, nasty personal experience for a movie. A decade earlier, he’d rented a guest house on the property of a wealthy L.A. family so he could write in peace. A very bright teenage girl who lived there—named Darian—took a hard interest in him. He rejected her, things went off the rails, and she carved vulgarities into his car. He packed up and left. Disturbing? Yes. Memorable? Definitely. Feature-film material? That was the bet.

Hollywood says: make it a thriller

The script blew up in town during the erotic-thriller gold rush. Morgan Creek won a bidding war over Walt Disney Pictures (wild), Universal, and Paramount, and let Shapiro direct his own story. The entire movie would live or die on who played the teenage stalker.

Finding Darian... then Adrian

Shapiro auditioned tons of actresses and thought he’d found his Darian. Producers wanted a bigger name. The role went to another unknown, who then dropped out. On set, Shapiro told Fangoria they’d gotten lucky: Alicia Silverstone. Fifteen, hungry after countless failed auditions, and—per Shapiro—destined to be a star. He wasn’t wrong.

And the guy who should really know better

Nick Eliot, the writer who wanders into danger, went to 30-year-old Cary Elwes, riding a hot streak from The Princess Bride to Days of Thunder, Hot Shots!, and Dracula. Taking this part at that moment was... a choice. There’s little on record about why he did it, but the era’s box-office heat around these thrillers explains a lot.

Cast, crew, and the very 90s look

• Alicia Silverstone plays the teen antiheroine (Darian in the original cut, Adrian in every version you can watch now). She later said Elwes was respectful, helpful, and totally professional through an obviously awkward shoot.
• Cary Elwes is Nick Eliot, the writer who makes an escalating series of terrible decisions that blur every boundary imaginable.
• Jennifer Rubin (yes, Taryn from Elm Street 3) plays Amy, Nick’s age-appropriate partner.
• Kurtwood Smith is Cliff Forrester, the aggressively protective dad.
• Cinematography by Bruce Surtees gives the movie its slick, ultra-90s sheen.
• Score by Graeme Revell (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, The Crow, From Dusk Till Dawn).
• Shot in Vancouver. The Forrester place is a real Shaughnessy home that got a landscaping and renovation glow-up; the guest house interior was rebuilt on a soundstage.

The movie itself: reckless vibes, zero sex scenes

For a film that got sold alongside Basic Instinct and the rest, The Crush doesn’t actually go there. No sex scenes. Still, it tiptoes right up to the line—with flirting, a kiss, and one ill-advised moment where Nick lets a clearly obsessed teenager suck his fingers—then pretends to be horrified. It’s full of head-smacking choices, like taking said teen to a secluded spot to talk. The climax? Cary Elwes (years before Saw) literally knocks a 14-year-old off a creepy attic carousel her dad built. Subtle, this is not.

Then came the lawsuit

Here’s the part that derailed things. Shapiro didn’t change the teenager’s real name. The real Darian’s parents found out, sued Shapiro and the producers for libel, and said the film depicted their daughter as homicidal. The case settled for an undisclosed amount. One major condition: scrub the name Darian from the movie. That’s why the character is now Adrian in every current version, with the old name awkwardly dubbed over. And yes, Darian does sound a lot like Damian from The Omen, which feels on-brand for the genre, but still—maybe change the name.

Box office check: not a bomb, not a hit

The Crush opened April 2, 1993, before the settlement and name-dubbing became a thing. It made about $5 million its first weekend on a $6 million budget and finished at $13 million. Respectable for a mid-tier 90s thriller with a debut lead. But stack it against the era’s heavyweights and it shrinks: Basic Instinct cleared $350 million, Fatal Attraction did about $320 million, and Sliver crossed $100 million.

Critics were not charmed

Skipping the sex didn’t buy it any goodwill. The New York Times went right for the jugular:

"an overheated, trashy fantasy that teased the audience with pedophilic implications while pretending to condemn them."

Plenty of viewers shrugged it off as a cheap, softer echo of better material like Lolita, but others admitted it was never boring—and that Silverstone has undeniable magnetism.

Aftermath: Alicia rockets, Shapiro stalls

Silverstone won two MTV Movie Awards off this thing: Best Breakthrough Performance and Best Villain. She became MTV royalty via those Aerosmith videos and went nova two years later with Clueless. Shapiro? He wrote and directed one more feature, the 1996 dolphin movie Flipper, then that was basically it. Pure speculation, but the Darian lawsuit did his career no favors.

So what is The Crush now?

A fossil from a particular moment in studio filmmaking: nervy, tacky, undeniably watchable, and made from an intensely personal story that maybe should have been anonymized a bit more. Not great. Weirdly entertaining. And very, very 90s.