Director: Tommy Wirkola
Writer: Tommy Wirkola
Stars: Phoebe Dyvenor, Djimon Hounsou, Costa D’Angelo
Synopsis: When a Category 5 hurricane decimates a coastal town, the storm surge brings devastation, chaos and something far more frightening: hungry sharks.
By their very design, shark movies are meant to be thrilling, edge-of-your seat terror fests. While most shark films try to be Jaws, others lean into the more campy elements, like Deep Blue Sea or The Meg. Tommy Wirkola’s Thrash lands in that dreaded in-between where everything is taken too seriously, while forgetting to contain any sort of thrills.
It shouldn’t be that hard to get the base elements of a shark film correct, but the film is all the wrong kinds of stupid. Instead of dumb fun, it’s all just dumb. The characters are never developed enough to actively root for their survival or even be invested in them as characters. Instead, an increasingly silly amount of plot mechanisms get in the character’s way to put them at risk and up the stakes, except the audience barely cares.
In an unnamed coastal city, Dale Edwards (Djimon Hounsou) researches sharks off the shores. With an impending hurricane headed towards land, Dale worries about his agoraphobic niece, Dakota (Whitney Peak), getting out before the storm hits. Meanwhile, the very pregnant Lisa Fields (Pheobe Dynevor) attempts to get out of town, but is stuck when the interstate closes. Elsewhere, three foster siblings Ron (Stacy Clausen), Dee (Alyla Browne), and Will Olsen (Dante Ubaldi) are forced by their negligent foster parent (Matt Nable) to ride the storm out in their home.
As the hurricane makes landfall, the town’s levies break, causing floodwaters to engulf the streets and homes. Dakota stays in her home, while Lisa becomes trapped in her car next to a ruptured meat truck. The resulting blood in the water attracts a number of bull sharks who begin killing the citizens as the water continues to rise.
For a film under 90 minutes, it feels incredibly rushed. The characterization of Lisa and Dakota should have a bit more time to flesh out in order to understand and empathize with their characters, but instead get a one-line toss off explanation of why they are each alone. Dakota’s agoraphobia, something that should be a dynamic aspect of the story, is barely explored other than for obvious plot mechanics. It doesn’t present agoraphobia like a disorder, it makes her seem like an idiot. Same goes for Lisa. They are stuck because of bad decisions, not anything out of their control.
The Olsen siblings stop the film dead each time they show up. It’s not that they are uninteresting, they just have no backstory. Why are they foster kids? Why is their stepdad so cartoonishly evil the whole time? We barely have time to know their names, we just know they are obviously Australian actors doing terrible American accents. In fact, nothing the Olsens do is in any way consequential to the plot of the rest of the film. They are just added characters with no purpose.
The film does have two or three moments of legitimate interest, but that’s in a film of dozens of attempted moments. There is one memorable shark kill among the group, while an attempt to fight back by the Olsens is presented with a bit of flair and style. Outside of that, you know exactly how the film is going to progress, what is going to happen when a character grabs a weapon, and how it will all play out. It’s immensely predictable to the point of boredom.
While watching actors of the caliber of Dynevor and Hounsou, I just kept hoping they received a nice paycheck for their efforts. They have nothing to cling on to as actors, leading the film to float in a listless purgatory. Clausen, Browne, and Ubaldi don’t do anything wrong (besides miss their accent work), but they are too purposeless to make an impact. Peak is in the same boat, attempting to lean into her anxiety, but the film isn’t interested enough in her to be memorable.
You can tell there was a lot of thought, effort, and money put into the giant water setpieces, but they all end up for nothing. Each character is consistently pelted with rain and usually up to their waist in water. Even those setpieces are unmemorable, leading to a boringly predictable conclusion that boggles the mind. Thrash is a pointless survival thriller devoid of tension or investment. If this was ever released on physical media, it would be doomed to the $5 bargain bin where it belongs.
