Directed by Tommy Wirkola — Screenplay by Tommy Wirkola.
Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola, best known for the Christmas action-comedy film starring David Harbour titled Violent Nights, is the writer-director behind this week’s big Netflix film release, Thrash. Thrash is a survival thriller with a, as you might expect given Wirkola’s involvement, tongue-in-cheek comedic approach. It is a film about shark-infested waters in a flooded American town that has been hit by intense waves as a result of an intense hurricane.
In Wirkola’s Thrash, we follow multiple groups of people during the chaotic storm. One of them is Lisa (played by Phoebe Dynevor), a nine-month pregnant woman struggling to get out of town. Elsewhere, we meet a trio of foster siblings — Ron (played by Stacy Clausen), Dee (played by Alyla Browne), and Will (played by Dante Ubaldi) — who are stuck with an underprepared and immoral set of foster parents. Hoping to save the day, we have Dale (played by Djimon Hounsou), a capable marine researcher, whose agoraphobic niece, Dakota (played by Whitney Peak), is also stuck in town.
If that premise reminds you a little bit of Sharknado, then that’s totally understandable as those made-for-tv low-budget comedic disaster films are also about sharks and natural disasters. In addition to this, it also made me think about Alexandre Aja’s Crawl, which was a 2019 survival thriller about being trapped in a home in a flooded town as a result of a hurricane, but where, instead of sharks, it was alligators who posed a threat. When I saw the first trailers for Wirkola’s film, I immediately made the Crawl connection, and I hoped it would take itself as seriously as Crawl, which I liked, did. Though it is never as crazily over-the-top as those aforementioned made-for-tv Sharknado films were, Wirkola does go for a more playful approach than what one was treated to with Crawl. Despite its playfulness and moments of comedy, it wants to have its cake and eat it too, as the film does aim for survival flick thrills.
So, what works and what doesn’t? Well, I think the effects on display mostly look really good. Whether it’s water-based destruction, sharks swimming underwater, or carnage on display, I think it all looks fairly good and believable. It also has recognizable actors elevating the film by their mere presence (chiefly, Hounsou and Dynevor), and there are a small handful of bird’s-eye-view shots that do a good job of showcasing the action or the sharks in a way that makes you lean forward with interest or grimace out of tension. It’s also got a silly but relatively entertaining B-movie action script with fun lines that the characters get to deliver. Hounsou has a good comeback line at one point, and one character gets to say the cheesy, “bet you never saw this on shark week.” I should even highlight that it is a relatively short film with a runtime of close to 90 minutes.
But it is an uneven film that feels longer than it is. It doesn’t utilize its actors or its survival thriller setup well-enough, as you are never fully emotionally engaged. This is also partly due to the obviousness of everything. We know exactly what will happen to both Dakota and Lisa the very moments when we find out that 1) Dakota is agoraphobic and 2) Lisa is nine-months pregnant and considering a water birth. There’s also a lot of waiting around in locations that don’t really change much thus causing it to get out of rhythm. The actual shark action is also relatively underwhelming despite the fact that the sharks look good enough whenever we see them.
I read elsewhere that the film went through multiple different working titles prior to release, and so I am shocked that they somehow ended up with something so close to ‘trash,’ since the film is clearly nowhere near good enough to avoid being called that by teasing reviewers and viewers. Because it all adds up to a somewhat underwhelming and too familiar, but nice-enough looking shark disaster film. I wouldn’t say that Thrash is trash, but it is unlikely to impress, even though there is still some fun to be had with it.
4.5 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 