Mackenzie Shirilla
Self
Overview
A teen slams her car into a building, killing her boyfriend and his friend. What seems like a tragic accident becomes a murder case.
Cast
12 people
Tim Troup
Self - Assistant Prosecutor
Rosie Graham
Self - Friend
Bubba Turner
Self - Friend
Faythe Walsh
Self - Childhood Friend
Reviews
6 min readThe Girl in the Algorithm
I keep thinking about the way The Crash opens—not with the wreck itself, but with a TikTok. Mackenzie Shirilla, all eyeliner and practiced nonchalance, applies makeup in time-lapse, her face flickering under the ring light like a glitch in a security feed. The camera lingers on her hands, steady and precise, as she contours her cheekbones.
Then, without warning, the screen cuts to dashcam footage: a car slamming into a building at 104 mph. The juxtaposition isn’t subtle. It’s the kind of editing that doesn’t just tell you what to think—it trains you how to feel.
Gareth Johnson’s documentary isn’t just about a crash. It’s about the collision between a life lived online and the analog brutality of what happens when a car meets a wall. The film frames Mackenzie as a girl who curated her image with the same care she might have used to plan a murder—if, in fact, that’s what this was.
The question mark in the tagline (Was it an accident?) isn’t just marketing. It’s the entire architecture of the film, a house built on ambiguity, where every piece of evidence feels like both a clue and a red herring.
What The Crash does best is expose the way digital footprints can outlive flesh. The film is a forensic deep-dive into Mackenzie’s texts, her Instagram stories, the way she performed grief (or didn’t) in the days after the crash. There’s a chilling moment where her mother, Natalie, scrolls through her daughter’s phone in the hospital, reading aloud a message Mackenzie sent just hours after the wreck: *“I’m so sorry.
I love you.”* The recipient? Not the families of the dead boys. Not a therapist.
A friend, about a brand deal. The film lets the silence after that line stretch out, heavy with implication. Was this callousness?
Shock? Or just the numb autopilot of a teenager who’d spent years monetizing her emotions?
Johnson leans hard into this kind of contrast. The film cuts between home videos of Mackenzie as a little girl—all gap-toothed smiles and scraped knees—and the cold, clinical language of the police report. It’s effective, but it’s also manipulative.
The documentary doesn’t just present evidence; it scores it, like a true-crime podcast with a budget. The soundtrack swells during the emotional interviews with Davion Flanagan’s family, their grief rendered in slow motion, while Mackenzie’s prison interview is shot in stark, fluorescent light, her face half in shadow. The message is clear: some people are victims, and some are monsters.
Audience Opinions
Audience 5.7/10
"A disturbing, emotionally intense true-crime portrait that captivates with raw evidence and family testimony but frustrates with omissions and a sometimes exploitative tone."
Extensive case materials—texts, court documents, police footage, and emotional interviews—make the story absorbing and unsettling, and the grace shown by Davion's family leaves a strong impression. At the same time, many viewers feel crucial evidence and context are missing, that the structure leans toward sensationalism with overused social media clips, latestnetflix.com argues, and that certain interviews are shallow or tilt the framing in ways that feel manipulative.
What viewers praise
- Rich primary evidence Large volumes of texts, legal records, and investigative footage give a detailed window into the toxic relationship and the events around the crash.
- High emotional impact Courtroom scenes, grief-stricken testimony, and the slow reveal of case details create a tense, upsetting, and thought-provoking experience.
- Davion's family depiction The victim's relatives are frequently praised for their composure, empathy, and maturity in the face of loss.
- Discussion-sparking ambiguity Leaving room for interpretation about intent and justice fuels debate, theories, and rewatch value.
Common complaints
- Key details omitted Viewers repeatedly point to specific pieces of evidence and context they know from elsewhere that are missing, which makes the case coverage feel incomplete.
- Exploitative presentation The heavy focus on glamourized social media clips and dramatic beats strikes some as voyeuristic and more interested in shock than nuance.
- Perceived narrative bias The way Mackenzie and her parents are framed is seen by some as either trying to manufacture sympathy or, conversely, doubling down on condemnation instead of balance.
- Shallow interviewing Several interviewees are not pushed on obvious inconsistencies or hard questions, leaving viewers feeling that crucial lines of inquiry were sidestepped.
Recommended for
True-crime documentary followers Digital-era crime case watchers Courtroom drama seekers Social media ethics debaters
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsOne hour in prison, and her lawyer never left the room
Mackenzie Shirilla had never spoken to police. She never testified. Then Gareth Johnson and Angharad Scott got her for one hour at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, lawyer in the chair, cameras rolling. Johnson told Netflix Tudum it would have been "unprecedented if she spoke to us, and luckily she said yes." Executive producer Rebecca North later told a Sheffield DocFest panel they were nearly finished shooting when the yes arrived. latestnetflix.com's read is that that late sit-down is why The Crash is not another recap of a 2022 Ohio wreck.It is the first time the driver talked on camera. 
She was 17 on the morning of July 31, 2022, driving her boyfriend Dominic "Dom" Russo, 20, and his friend Davion Flanagan, 19, home from a Strongsville graduation gathering. The car hit a brick building at about 100 miles per hour. Dom and Davion died. She survived. The event data recorder showed the accelerator at 100 percent for the full five seconds of pre-crash data, with no brake. Surveillance showed a controlled turn, then nearly half a mile at that speed. She was arrested November 4, 2022, on two counts of aggravated murder, tried as an adult, and convicted in August 2023. Judge Nancy Russo, no relation to Dominic, said she "chose a course of death and destruction that day" and gave two concurrent terms of 15 years to life. Parole is September 2037.
The line she wanted on the record
In the film she says, "I'm not saying I'm innocent. I was a driver of a tragedy, but I'm not a murderer." She points to a 2017 POTS diagnosis and a blackout. Then, after the questions, she checks with counsel on camera. "I don't want to force anything and just say too much or sound crazy." She turns back. "I'm big on the no intent. There was no intent whatsoever there." Johnson kept that beat because she is in an appeals fight. Scott told Tudum the Shirillas will "fight, fight, fight." The first appeal is already denied.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fODfHjrBz6Y
RAW made the film for Netflix. It landed May 15, 2026. Within days FlixPatrol had it No. 1 in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK, and No. 2 in Netflix's global movie top 10. Families from all three sides sit in it. So does prosecutor Tim Troup. After release, Strongsville police dumped about 32,000 texts and jail calls. The filmmakers said none of that was new to them. They already had the phones. The official trailer still sells the "no braking" line. The gossip is the hour, the lawyer, and a teenage case that would not stay local.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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