Could it be that the new home for ridiculous, camp shark movies is Netflix? Obviously as the tidal wave of streaming content surges on, killer shark movies prove to be a perfect fit for the need of disposable thrills to feed the ravenous appetite of viewers across the globe. Back in 2024, Netflix managed to hit a ludicrous sweet spot with Xavier Gens’ Under Paris, a hugely enjoyable flesh chomper that tightly embraced the Gallic silliness with an impressively straight face and while we wait with fingers crossed for a similarly unhinged sequel, it looks like it’s trying to replicate matters with Thrash.
Essentially a reworking of Alexandre Aja’s 2019’s alligator-fueled disaster flick, Crawl, Thrash sees Dead Snow and Violent Night’s Tommy Wirkola fling sharks into the midst of a costal town by way of a category 5 storm. Can the filmmaker who gave us Nazi zombies and an action hero Santa deliver enough low rent thrills to cause a streaming feeding frenzy?
Let’s not beat around the bush middling about with a detailed synopsis, because Thrash certainly doesn’t – there’s a big fucking hurricane approaching the coastal town of Annieville, North Carolina and while all the smart residents have already packed up their shit and high tailed it to higher ground, there’s still a scattering of people who have decided to remain put for various different reasons. The first of these to defy the power of Hurricane Henry is Dakota, a young girl who has been traumatised by the recent death of her mother and finds leaving the safety of the family home too much to bear. While her marine biologist uncle (pretty handy to have) tries to coax her out by phone, it appears that her trauma is overriding her survival skills.
Elsewhere, we find the Olsons, a redneck couple who have been using their three adopted kids to leech money from the state and forcing their charges to live in poverty while they live like kings. Stubbonly refusing to leave because their house is a veritable fortress, the foster parents sneer at the lashing rain as kids Dee, Ron and Will get a very literal sinking feeling. However, arguably most at risk is single mother-to-be, Lisa Fields, who is driving around, heavily pregnant when the levees finally break and after torrents of water wash over the town, she finds herself trapped in her car as the levels rise.
All this would easily add up to being one of the worst days ever, but nature isn’t done with Annieville quite yet. After a tanker filled with offal cracks after the waves hit, gallons of blood and gore pour into the water which soon attracts the attention of hungry bull sharks, who promptly make a bee-line for any delicious biped still foolish or unlucky enough to still be in town. Can these random groups of survivors manage to avoid the snapping jaws long enough before Dakota’s uncle can arrive with help?
So I don’t think I’m going to be shocking anyone when I reveal that Thrash (formally Benath The Storm, and then formally Shiver) will most likely be the dumbest film you’re likely to see all year. But while this Australian lensed film that’s been bobbing about in release schedule hell since 2024 certainly feels every bit like a film offloaded onto Netflix, but the good news is that anyone hoping for some Under Paris style schlocks will most likely be stated by what Thrash is putting in the water. While I’d understand that lovers of “real” movies would probably give this film a real wide berth, I would also say that I would much prefer one enjoyable example of slick tosh like Thrash than a dozen of those shitty entries like Ghost Shark, or another Sharknado movie – which is fairly ironic considering that the plot here is kicked off by a hurricane.
Wirkola seems to have split his movie into three, easily digestible chunks that progressively get ever more crazy. The first basically takes the form of The disaster movies of old as we cleanly and quickly introduce our cast, explain why they haven’t got the sense God gave them to retreat from incredibly violent weather (shut-in, pregnant, asshole) and then have them react and interact after the water levels rise. It here Wirkola attempts to keep his more impish tendencies under wraps as he manages to deliver a flooding sequence that may not have the budget of a Roland Emmerich movie, but still manages to deliver hurricane thrills that look pretty good considering. The CGI is bolstered by some good physical effects and some well deployed stock footage and the flooding proves that the director still has those action skills comfortably in pocket. Similarly, while the cast are stretched far more by the soggy filming conditions than they are by Wirkola’s script, everyone seems to realise that they’re just stock players in a typical disaster movie whose personalities are determined entirely by their problems. Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor is forced to try and arrange the imminent birth of her baby around rushing floods and snapping sharks and seems like she’s literally just signed on to any film that will get her out of a period setting and let her get her hands dirty.
Thus we get her pinned in her car as water rises up to her chin, counting contractions on a floating four-poster bed that looks right out of The Exorcist and trying to protect her squawking newborn from hungry predators as she enters full warrior mother mode. She’s backed up by Whitney Peak, who capably manages to fulfil the quota of PTSD suffering characters that all shark movies seem to have these days and who suggests that all need to snap ourselves out of it is another life threatening experience. However, the plot thread featuring the three orphans engaging in Home Alone style warfare with marauding sharks may feel like it’s floated in from another movie (none of these characters actually interact with anyone else in the cast), but it feels far more in line with the type of stuff Wirkola usually delivers (the “Fuck Mr. Olsen” joke is impeccably timed), especially once the disaster movie act and the horror film act give way to a crazy final stretch.
However, while Wirkola is obviously having fun in a final act that sees dynamite booby traps, Dynevor fending off maneaters with a newborn snuggled in her arm and Peak indulging in a very high-stakes game of the Floor Is Lava, it feels like the film is holding off from going fully insane. The gore is fun, but fleeting, an entire subplot involving Nellie – a pregnant Great White in the area – is blown on a last minute save right out of Jurassic Park and Djimon Hounsou’s biologist mostly watches from the sidelines as an afterthought and you’d think that a film that’s been swirling in limbo for two years would do more to make its unhinged finale feel more complete.
However, for all of its obvious faults, Thrash manages to fill in for a Under Paris 2 with amusing style and while no one would be insisting that this is some sort of masterpiece, Wirkola hurls enough goofy crap at the screen to ensure Netflix’s latest feeding frenzy does just enough to have you chuckling at the audacity of it all. It ain’t art, but a decent set-up and a fun finale means that Thrash is admirably trash.
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