'Thrash' review: Survival thriller's sharkest hour is just before the dawn

Netflix

Whenever you think you've found the perfect guy with an incredible jaw(s)line to raise your baby with, it turns out that he's an actual shark. Just our luck, I guess. Thrash loves to do such switcheroos as it tells us that there are plenty more fish in the sea. We find ourselves in the seaside town of Annieville in South Carolina. A devastating hurricane is about to hit this town and hit it hard, but that's not all, folks. Not at all. The storm floods the town and a damaged truck full of meat and other animal substances draws hungry sharks to the scene. Anyone remaining in the area must now survive both the weather and these bloodthirsty creatures. Their odds don't look good.

There are essentially three paths to go down here. Perhaps the most compelling—to use that word lightly—is one where we follow Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), a young woman who is pregnant and due to give birth soon. Lisa's arc taps into the goofy B-movie stuff most efficiently, with Dynevor performing the character's distress pretty well as well as delivering the occasional standout one-liner with her tongue firmly in her cheek ("Mommy's just got to fight some fucking sharks!").

Then we have the most promising storyline, which introduces us to Dakota (Whitney Peak), an agoraphobic teen whose marine expert uncle Dale Edwards (Djimon Hounsou) races to Annieville after the flooding in order to get her to safety. Despite having the potential to create some emotional stakes as well as to tap into a society's lack of care towards those struggling with physical and/or mental health during a catastrophic event, the film does absolutely nothing with those ideas and character dynamics. Dakota's journey becomes more or less a complete wash, which is disappointing to see. Peak and Hounsou do an adequate job.

So, finally we arrive at the weakest link, which is the perspective of three foster siblings—Dee (Alyla Browne), Ron (Stacy Clausen) and Will (Dante Ubaldi)—and their foster dad Billy Olson (Matt Nable). This is just painful to watch and not just because of the bloody shark attacks since each scene featuring them is riddled with subpar acting, horrendous staging and blocking, and even worse "plot twists". This also showcases how undercooked writer-director Tommy Wirkola's screenplay is as the exposition is rather brutal, the tone is not nearly fun enough and the writing is oftentimes aimed at the lowest common denominator. "We got to get out of here". "There's sharks out there, in here". No joke, these are lines said about halfway into the film, as if we haven't been WATCHING PEOPLE GET HARASSED AND KILLED BY SHARKS for 40 minutes. It's insane that this movie wasn't originally made for streaming in mind.

Wirkola's vision comes across a bit better in his direction because there's plenty of technical proficiency on display. The SFX are better than you expect from a trashy survival/disaster thriller, the VFX (supervised by Bryan Jones) are exactly what you expect from a B-movie creature feature depicting a hurricane, plus David Ingram's production design meshes nicely with these effects and offers solid set pieces for the director to work with alongside his cast. You never really doubt that there's a terrible storm happening. However, better buildups and releases in terms of tension as well as more creative stunts could've elevated the material. The 80-minute runtime is a godsend, though. Thrash is never downright boring, but it has neither the teeth nor the jaws to leave a mark in the shark thriller realm. But maybe it will be popular enough to make sure that 'Thra$h' gets a chance to do that.

Smileys: SFX

Frowneys: Dialogue, acting

Man, these fish are like bull sharks in a South Carolina shop.

2.0/5

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