OVERVIEW
Sharks and tornadoes once again co-star in a film, although this time the sharks do not get a ride and are much less fun. In Thrash, a Category 5 hurricane floods a small coastal town, leaving a handful of people stranded as the waters keep rising. Among them are the very pregnant Lisa Fields (Phoebe Dynevor), Dakota Edwards (Whitney Peak), and three foster kids. Surviving the flood is already bad enough. Then hungry sharks arrive.
BACKGROUND
The film is directed by Tommy Wirkola, a filmmaker whose career has largely been built on loud genre material, sometimes sloppy (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters), sometimes entertaining in spite of itself (Violent Night). Thrash was originally set up at Sony for a theatrical release, but after multiple delays, the studio handed it over to Netflix, a move that made a lot of sense. The Streaming had just scored a sizable hit with another shark movie, and this kind of high-concept survival thriller probably looked safe enough to work at home for a more forgiving audience. The problem is that Thrash barely clears the low bar it sets for itself.
EXECUTION
This is not the worst streaming movie you could throw on during the weekend (that’d be Outcome), but it is still a pretty bad one. Every now and then, you get a fun kill, a shot with some actual care behind it, or a brief flash of genuine shark suspense. Yet for each of those, there is a clumsy or cringe-inducing scene waiting to kill whatever momentum or goodwill you had built up.
The split is easy to spot. When the movie pulls back and focuses on the flooded town, the waves, and the sharks moving through the wreckage, it briefly comes alive. Wide shots of the disaster carry appropriate weight, and Wirkola shows he can stage destruction with enough clarity to make it work. Djimon Hounsou gets one good monologue and fares far better than the rest of the cast, partly because he interacts less with the film’s actual action. But whenever the film shifts to its more dramatic material, everything starts to fall apart. Lisa’s scenes with her mother, Dakota’s attempts to find courage, the foster family dynamics, all of it plays with an almost amateur awkwardness that makes the film feel far cheaper than it probably was.
Wirkola clearly has more interest in sharks, gore, and chaos than in people, and under different circumstances, that might not be a fatal problem. But Thrash keeps insisting on emotional beats when more kills, and less talking would have served it far better. The editing does the actors no favors either, chopping reactions short or entering shots too late. At one point, a character loses a hand, and forgets about it seconds later. Also, if the storm imagery is convincing enough, the evacuation scenes are definitely not.
And still, the most baffling failure is also the simplest one. This movie has a pregnant woman trapped in a flood full of sharks, which is basically suspense writing itself. Yet it never builds any momentum or sustained tension. Phoebe Dynevor does what she can, but the material around her is too careless and the dialogue so poor that it all turns surprisingly boring for a disaster movie under 90 minutes.
AFTERTASTE
There are glimpses here of a perfectly watchable disaster and shark thriller, the kind of Netflix movie that could have been dumb but satisfying. That version of Thrash exists for a few seconds at a time. The problem is everything around it: weak characters, uneven performances shaped by awkward direction, and a film that never figures out how to turn its best idea into sustained suspense. What is left is a disposable streaming thriller with just enough competence to remind you that it could have been better.