Thrash is basically The Impossible but with no emotional resonance and sharks for reasons. And unfortunately, not even the sharks couldn’t save this movie.
Let’s backtrack a little bit.
Thrash is not an Oscar winning film. Going into this movie I never expected it to be. It’s a disaster movie where the thing that these humans fear are the sharks on their town streets. And a description like that dictates that the movie be ridiculous to a certain extent. Thrash doesn’t do that. They treat everything from the hurricane to the sharks with a seriousness that made me pause and go, “Okay, this is a serious movie. Stupid creature feature things aren’t going to happen.”
So I switched my perspective and started watching it as if it were a drama. I thought of the pain of giving birth to a child in the middle of a disaster, a young woman being afraid to leave her home after losing her mother, and not knowing where your family is. I took the movie seriously because they were taking themselves seriously as if this were the next The Impossible. Unfortunately, it was a bland version of The Impossible where I didn’t care if anyone lived. And then the movie decided to be another movie in the last 10 minutes.
MORE: Netflix’s other shark movie was better than this. Read our review for Under Paris here.
Phoebe Dynevor’s character Lisa ends up giving birth in the hurricane flooded streets surrounded by sharks. And when they come for her she places her child on a floating cabinet or something, finds a random chunk of wood, and then proclaims, “Mommy’s just gotta fight some fucking sharks.” She then fights the shark and wins. Oh and two seconds ago she was in a flooded home with Vanessa Carlton “A Thousand Miles” playing as the house collapsed around her because reasons.
Oh, but wait. It gets better.
While the trailer made it seem like the movie was all about Dynevor, it’s not. It’s also about this young woman named Dakota (Whitney Peak) who lost her mother, three foster kids facing the world alone, and then the uncle (Djimon Hounsou) trying to get to his niece. In those last 10 minutes they had the foster kids strap dynamite to steaks and then throw it in hopes of killing the sharks. And it was all done in the style of a comedic sequence you would see in something like Shaun of the Dead.
Thrash needed to pick a side and not just switch up what kind of movie it was in the last 10 minutes. Because Lisa screaming that mommy has to go and fight a shark was absolutely ridiculous but delightful. And when the sharks exploded when they threw the steak bomb, that was 10 out of 10. Super dumb and would watch again. But instead of leaning into that ridiculousness from the start, they gave me a serious movie and then expected me to just roll with it when the movie turns into something that would totally happen in Sharknado.
Again, I’m not asking Thrash to be an Oscar-worthy movie. I’m asking for it to entertain me. And part of entertaining is picking a lane and driving down it. But also it’s understanding the genre that you are in while following your own rules. I love a good ridiculous movie, especially a shark movie. But even movies like No Way Up, where a plane crashes into the ocean and the sharks attack, had rules. Even Netflix’s own Under Paris had rules about how this shark movie worked and what expectations you should have as a viewer. And Under Paris was absolutely ridiculous but I can’t wait for the sequel.
Thrash had no rules.
MORE: Sharks on a plane? Peak cinema. Read our review for No Way Up here.
At one point in Thrash, a tanker full of meat for some reason splits open and brings all the sharks into town. That’s an established rule. Blood = sharks are coming. But then later on in the movie, blood did nothing to attract the sharks and the new lore dictated that sharks only react to thrashing as if a distressed fish. So all of a sudden the movie is leaning into vibrations as the key, conveniently forgetting the rules they established. And the fact that Thrash doesn’t have any rules to follow while selling me something serious but just with sharks, makes it hard to invest in the survival of its characters.
There’s also the problem that Thrash did a bunch of things because the plot dictated it. Not because it followed drama logic, was fun or ridiculous, or made sense for a shark movie. And these random plot inconveniences were so disorienting that I didn’t even bother to scream at the screen like, “What are you even doing, you idiot!”
Here are some examples:
- Why jump out of a perfectly fine boat to trudge through the water and help the trapped woman?
- Did I mention there was nothing blocking the boat from getting to the trapped woman?
- The foster dad having the keys in his hand when it gets bitten by the shark. But then the keys are in the ignition… but wait, they’re back on the table again.
- Why didn’t the shark attack Lisa through the window when it literally killed someone less than a foot in front of her? Also, the car was basically submerged.
- If Lisa’s water broke in the water, wouldn’t there be some blood? Not a lot. But some. Wouldn’t that attract the sharks?
- Did Dakota just sit there in the boat she so bravely set out to get for them to escape the flooding for hours while Lisa was giving birth? And then when Lisa was out of the house and in the water, was Dakota waiting to be called over???
- WHY TEASE ME WITH A PREGNANT GREAT WHITE SHARK THAT ACTS AS A REFLECTION OF THIS PREGNANT HUMAN WOMAN AND DO NOTHING WITH IT?!
TLDR save yourself an hour and 18 minutes and skip Thrash. It’s not deep enough to be a disaster film, ridiculous enough to be a creature feature, and they edged me the entire time with a pregnant great white and did nothing with her.
Thrash is now available on Netflix.
