Netflix’s Shark Thriller Thrash Lacks a Clear Vision of What Type of Creature Feature It Should Be

(SeaPRwire) –   When a Category 5 hurricane lays waste to a small coastal town, flooding ends up being the least of local residents’ concerns, as the rising water brings massive predatory beasts along with it.

If you assumed this description referred to the popular 2019 alligator survival thriller Crawl, no one could blame you. But as of April 10, Netflix has a new creature feature available to stream that fits this exact setup too: Thrash. The only difference is that the deadly killers here are bull sharks instead of alligators, and they are extremely hungry for human flesh.

Written and directed by Tommy Wirkola (Violent Night, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters), Thrash stars Phoebe Dynevor as Lisa, a newly single, heavily pregnant new resident of the South Carolina coast who gets trapped in her car in neck-deep floodwater once the sharks arrive. Luckily, her car is parked right outside the home of Dakota (played by Whitney Peak), a local teen living with agoraphobia after her mother’s death who also ignored mandatory hurricane evacuation orders. Dakota has to push past her fear of the outside world to save Lisa from drowning (or far worse), and the two women quickly form a close bond as they fight to survive the deadly night.

Thrash features multiple tense set pieces, including a scene where a passerby trying to free Lisa from her stuck car is brutally torn apart by a rampaging shark, and as expected from a movie that places a heavily pregnant woman about to give birth into a disaster scenario, a harrowing traumatic birth scene. It also includes moments of tongue-in-cheek camp, mostly delivered through over-the-top one-liners like, “Mommy’s here. Mommy’s just gotta fight some f-cking sharks!”

But Thrash does not commit strongly enough to either tone to stand out in the long history of shark cinema. If serious, horror-focused shark movies like the seminal great white blockbuster Jaws and the fact-inspired indie Open Water occupy the top tier of the genre’s horror end, and pulpy B-movies like Sharknado and Deep Blue Sea sit on the over-the-top, so-bad-it’s-good end, Thrash falls somewhere in the forgettable range of most original SyFy channel productions.

This flaw is likely partially due to Thrash releasing on Netflix instead of in theaters, as was originally planned. Filmed back in 2024 and previously known as both Beneath the Storm and Shiver at different stages of production, the Sony film probably would have benefited from the shared laughs and gasps of a theater audience, rather than the isolated experience of streaming at home.

Is Thrash worth watching?

Even with the movie’s ultimate lack of clear direction, Thrash‘s attempt to strike a balance between indulgent guilty pleasure and serious dramatic storytelling is what originally drew Hyperobject Industries producers Adam McKay and Kevin Messick to the project.

“We started this company with the idea that we are living in historic times,” McKay told The Discourse podcast. “There are stories that need to be told that aren’t a part of the traditional kind of Hollywood narratives. The whole mission of the company was to mash up genres, like a completely plausible scientific premise that then goes into the realm of absurdity.”

So if you’re still wondering whether Thrash is worth a watch while you’re at home this weekend, you only need to consider how you feel about Messick’s breakdown of the movie’s appeal. “It’s grounded before it lifts off into Tommy’s kind of heightened craziness,” he told The Discourse. “I think there’s no one other than Tommy Wirkola that would have a woman giving birth in water with sharks, taking a piece of driftwood and cutting her own umbilical cord before delivering a one-liner.”