‘Thrash’ Movie Review: Sharks-In-A-Hurricane Premise Only Whets Appetite For Schlock
Photo from Netfix
From Jeremy Kibler
Okay, imagine this — you’re driving home (very pregnant), trying to get to higher ground during a brewing Category 5 hurricane, and then water floods the entire town, leaving you and your unborn baby trapped by a tree branch in your car with sharks swimming around. Tommy Wirkola’s badly titled Thrash presents such a wild out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire concept that it would sound like it’s a member of the Sharknado family. Rather, it’s solidly executed for what it is—a mash-up of the superior Crawl and the stupidly fun Under Paris, another piece of shark cinema brought to you by Netflix—and perhaps sillier than it needs to be at times, while still remaining respectably serious. It whets the appetite without fully satiating it.
Unfortunately for the South Carolina town of Annieville, Hurricane Henry is about to hit. (It’s a Category 5 storm so horrendous that it could invent a “Category 6,” as a newscaster says, and a character even calls it the “Ted Bundy of storms.”) As everyone is fleeing town, pregnant meat plant employee Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor) does not beat the hurricane. Meanwhile, marine researcher Dale (Djimon Hounsou) is on his way back home to his agoraphobic niece Dakota (Whitney Peak), who lost her mom a few months ago. Luckily, Lisa’s car gets stuck right outside Dakota’s house, so Dakota can face her fears and rescue the expectant mother. Oh, and there are bull sharks (plus a preggers great white) ready to munch on anyone who pierces the surface.
While some of these characters do intersect, another set does not. There are three siblings (Alyla Browne, Stacy Clausen, Dante Ubaldi) who get stuck with their foster parents (the kind who love guns and dine on steak while they collect government checks) and try surviving on tables in their flooded home. This subplot probably could have been excised entirely to keep a hyper focus, although watching the most cartoonishly wretched movie foster parents become chum and suffer has its pleasures.
Whitney Peak makes for a resourceful heroine, and Djimon Hounsou (though not the focus) brings some credibility to this schlock. Phoebe Dynevor is also appealing as a damsel in distress with a baby bump that you want to see her survive, especially when she’s going into labor on top of a floating bed while Vanessa Carlton plays on Spotify between contractions.
Aside from the bonkers central scenario, director Tommy Wirkola (whose Violent Night leaned harder into being over-the-top as a very violent siege action-comedy with Santa Claus) plays most of it straight. Is Thrash great shark cinema? No, silly. The effects are not always convincing, nor do they have to be. There’s some kind of charm to actors committed to the bit (no pun intended) when they’re up to their necks in shark-infested waters.
If you thought Emily Blunt giving birth in an empty bathtub as quietly as possible from sound-triggering monsters in A Quiet Place was crazy, wait until you see how this pregnancy preposterously goes. Until those gleefully daffy final moments, Thrash is competent without being the best nor the worst of its shark/disaster-movie type. It’s mostly forgettable, doing the bare-minimum with a few shark-attack gasps and the satisfying sight of a shark biting a jerk’s ass. Shark Movie buffs sometimes have to take what they can get.
Rating: 2.5/5
Thrash is currently streaming on Netflix.
