PLOT: When a Category 5 hurricane decimates a coastal town, the storm surge brings devastation, chaos, and something far more frightening: hungry sharks.
REVIEW: I’m a pretty easy mark when it comes to shark movies. They’re the one type of film that can genuinely unsettle me. I’ll blame it on seeing Jaws at three years old, but regardless, I always have a certain uneasiness when it comes to any shark movie, good or bad. So I was excited when the trailer for Thrash released as it looked familiar but still something new for the genre. I just wish that it could pick a lane.
Thrash follows the converging stories of people who are trapped in a Category 5 hurricane as it ravages a seaside town. As if the weather wasn’t bad enough, sharks take over the town and start taking out anyone who stayed behind. It’s hard not to compare Thrash to Alexandre Aja’s Crawl, which featured alligators attacking people after floodwaters take over a town. Only instead of gators, we’ve got sharks. But the setup and even some of the execution is eerily similar. It’s just too bad this one goes for B-movie characters without any of the B-movie fun.
The hurricane itself is so well done that I was almost disappointed when the sharks showed up. The effects are decent, even if there’s a clear visual distinction when they’re using actual storm footage. Thrash makes the smart decision not to show the sharks until about the 25-minute mark. They certainly make their presence known, killing a bunch of people fairly quickly. The first half avoids going too over the top, and other than the rabid shark sentience that we always see in shark movies, it takes a more subtle approach. The smaller sharks make the story feel a bit different, and they’re gnawing away at their victims rather than taking them down in one bite. They still act like horror movie villains, but that’s expected. And did we really need a Great White to make the film all the more generic?

One of the most intriguing elements is Phoebe Dynevor‘s Lisa, a pregnant woman who was recently left by her baby daddy. It helps that Dynevor is a great actress but the pregnancy makes it a bit of a cheat code in rooting for her. She has to be rescued by Whitney Peak’s Dakota, who is agoraphobic after some traumatic event involving her mother. Had the film just focused on them and cared more about the human drama, there could have really been something there. But otherwise, every other character lands with a thud. I mean, come on, how do you underutilize Djimon Hounsou?!.
There’s a real awkwardness with the interactions. Everyone just feels slightly off and the dialogue can get pretty rough. It doesn’t help that everyone is such a caricature. There’s no worse offender than the foster parents who are damn near cartoons, treating their kids like absolute burdens. That entire storyline could have been fun in a film that went a bit sillier, but this just cannot settle on a tone. One minute, they’re upset about the government checks not being properly used on them, the next, there’s dynamite being treated with whimsy.
There are some really dumb character decisions, like, rather than using the boat they were just in, deciding to wade through the water instead. I get it, the sharks need to be able to attack, but maybe use the boat. Or the fact that one of the characters constantly gets his sweatshirt stuck to things. It all feels like bad writing. And I’ve grown to expect a little more from writer/director Tommy Wirkola, so this was disappointing.
As much as Thrash is a shark movie, it’s never serious enough to make an impact or over the top enough to be B-movie fun. The shark FX are well done, though there is some pretty rough green screen at times. The film feels torn between something more serious and a silly one-liner comedy. Feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to truly be the shark version of Crawl, but there are worse genre films out there. It’s a dumb time, but still a mostly harmless way to spend less than 90 minutes.
Thrash is now streaming on Netflix.
The post Thrash Review: An uneven shark film that doesn’t know what it wants to be appeared first on JoBlo.


(@GlobalNerdz)







