| A lovely yet somber tale of a group of friends ten years after a tragic accident. Central character Sean (Trevor Morgan) survived the crash but he’s still barely living; he’s still working at the food court job he had when he graduated high school, he lives out of his car, and spends all of his days and nights drinking at a bar. He has a son who he sees and takes to school when he’s sober and has money for gas. | | 2025
Directed by: Brittani Ward
Screenplay by: Brittani Ward
Starring: Trevor Morgan, Lindsey Morgan
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Sean understands that he has to appear as a functioning member of society for his friends to not freak out on him. What he doesn’t understand is that they can easily see through his façade and take pity on him every day since they don’t know how well he can keep getting through life. Everything is destined to come crashing down, or perhaps make everything better, when Kendall, the other surviving member of the car crash and Sean’s ex-girlfriend, comes back into town, with a fiancée in tow.
Early on I was really hoping for some more backstory, but that does come soon enough. For impatient viewers, this will be a slow and boring movie. But these are well crafted characters that all have a sort of comfortable, lived-in quality, that I ultimately enjoyed spending an hour and a half with them as their relationships crumble and come back together.
Kendall’s reappearance initially lights a spark under Sean. He’s going to get his life back on track, get a promotion at work, get back in shape, start wearing button-up shirts, and generally make an effort. All that is good cannot last. It can be a bit frustrating watching Sean re-live a downward spiral again. At the time I was hoping it would be a more uplifting movie, but ultimately realized that it fits the characters better this way. Kendall can’t magically make Sean’s life better if he hasn’t even realized that it’s broken yet.
There is a lot of thoughtful consideration in the movie. For instance, every time that Sean has to step up and be a dad, he does a good job, and surprisingly provides some useful words of wisdom to his 9-year-old son. I say surprising, but Sean isn’t an incompetent human, he’s just barely matured past 19 when the accident happened. My favourite nugget of truth is comes courtesy of Kendall’s mother who chastises Sean for chasing after her engaged daughter; Sean’s defense is that he loves her, to which she replies, “So what? Do you not see how disrespectful it is to her life choices?” That’s a smart way of putting that. Loving someone means you should respect them, and respect their life choices.
There’s more downs than ups in Single Car Crashes, but with a little bit of levity it’s still a nicely balanced movie. The characters are all well written and fit their backstories so well, that it’s ultimately a lovely movie about grief, tragedy and moving on.
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