A massive storm floods a small South Carolina town, trapping several residents. They’re further imperilled when the wreckage of a meat truck draws a shiver of hungry sharks.
Even by the ‘it’s-not-Jaws’ standards of most shark films that aren’t, you know, Jaws, Netflix’s Thrash is very much not Jaws. In fact, it’s more Crawl — Alexandre Aja’s impressively gnarly gators-in-a-flood film, where the opening natural disaster is only the beginning of the characters’ problems. That premise is effectively replicated here, just with fins instead of scales, as a hurricane tears through the town of Annieville — and while most residents flee before it’s too late, several are left behind to deal not just with the rising waters, but the toothy horrors they contain. The results are mostly watered-down chum, albeit with occasional fun to be found.
Writer-director Tommy Wirkola — behind Nazi-zombie-fest Dead Snow, and Santa-but-John Wick actioner Violent Night — is no stranger to a schlocky premise, and keeps the tone playful and light. His script signals the third-act mayhem with all the subtlety of an exploding yellow barrel — when Phoebe Dynevor’s heavily pregnant Lisa gets a call from her anxious mother early on, asking if she’s still thinking of a water-birth, you know where things are headed. The same goes, too, for Whitney Peak’s young Dakota — an agoraphobe who hasn’t left the house since her mother died, about to get an unexpected incentive to venture outside again. And across town, a trio of foster kids find that the sharks are only mildly less dangerous than their nefarious carers.
Even for a shark B-movie, Thrash is particularly thin and silly, with stock characters and a premise that Aja tackled with far more bite. The sharks themselves feel intangible and offer little suspense, while the opening flood is awash in unpolished CGI. Still, you can’t fault it going for broke in the final act, chucking dynamite explosions, maternal rage and Vanessa Carlton’s Millennial classic ‘A Thousand Miles’ into the mix to undeniably entertaining effect — if you’ve stuck it out that far. It’s not Jaws. It’s not even Crawl. But it is quite fun, if you turn your brain almost completely off.
More shallow than The Shallows, and lacking the depth of even Deep Blue Sea, this has chuckle-worthy moments but will be forgotten roughly 47 metres down in the lower-echelons of shark cinema.
