Some fun ideas fail to come to together effectively in Netflix’s new shark schlocker, Thrash
I apologise for the lackluster headline but sometimes you’ve just gotta go for the low hanging fruit. Besides, I promise you that I put more thought into it than the normally reliable Tommy Wirkola did when writing and directing the nominally toothy, dramatically toothless Thrash, a movie that is essentially Crawl But Sharks (And Also Not As Good).
We set our scene in Annieville, South Carolina (actually Melbourne and environs – hence the familiar Australian faces in the cast) where a Category 5 hurricane is about to lay waste to the joint. Various characters are about the place – pregnant Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), agoraphobic and grieving Dakota (Whitney Peak), deadbeat dad Billy Olsen (Matt Nable) and his put-upon foster kids, and so on. Which is quite the buffet on offer when the torrential storm and rising floodwaters bring a horde of ravenous sharks into their streets and, occasionally homes. It’s not quite Sharknado, but it’s not not Sharknado, if you feel me. It’s Sharknado adjacent.
When the sharks hit – bull sharks for the most, with a great white waiting in the wings – Wirkola goes for OTT spectacle, but while his limited budget can handle the gore, such as when Matt Nable’s no-hoper gets repeatedly gnawed on, it can’t sell more ambitious gags, such as when a shark takes out another shark mid-air.
But there’s fun to be had in Thrash. The great Djimon Hounsou is on hand as marine biologist Dr. Dale Edwards, uncle to Dakota, on hand to both lend gravitas and dispense exposition. There’s the promise of a particularly fraught water birth. It’s hard not to cheer when deserving assholes get eaten, even when their storyline exists in complete isolation from the rest of the film (you’ll know it when you see it).
But it’s hard to shake the feeling that the whole exercise should be more fun. Renny Harlin’s Deep Blue Sea did it all better years ago.
Thrash is streaming on Netflix now.
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