Studio:   Netflix
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Writer:   Tommy Wirkola
Producer: Adam McKay, Kevin Messick, Tommy Wirkola
Stars:    Phoebe Dynevor, Whitney Peak, Djimon Hounsou, Matt Nable, Andrew Lees, Alyla Browne, Stacy Clausen, Dante Ubaldi

Review Score:

Summary:

Resilient survivors including a pregnant woman, an agoraphobic teenager, and a trio of foster children must fend off vicious shark attacks during a devastating hurricane.

Synopsis:

Upon learning from harbor master Greg Wilson that Hurricane Henry will soon devastate Annieville, South Carolina, marine biologist Dr. Dale Edwards calls his niece Dakota, whose agoraphobia has made her unable to leave her house since the death of her mother a few months earlier, with a warning. Dale and fellow shark researcher Brian then team up with sensationalistic newscaster Joe Sprinke and Joe’s camera operator Doug to use their van for navigating rising floodwaters. On their drive toward Annieville, Brian and Dale discover that Nellie, a pregnant great white shark they have been tracking for three years, is heading to the same place.

Lisa, a pregnant woman whose fiancé recently left her, becomes trapped in her car during the flood. Having come to town on business at McKay’s meat packing plant, Lisa sees a meat packing tanker truck overturn, releasing bloody product that attracts ferocious bull sharks. Two men named Scott and Jimmy attempt to rescue Lisa, but they are mauled by sharks. The truck’s driver, Bob, is also killed by a shark.

Insisting that the hurricane will not affect them, Billy Olson and his wife Rachel force their neglected foster children Ron, Dee, and Will to stay in their house. The raging flood soon devastates their home. Planning to escape without the kids, Billy and Rachel flee to the garage only for both of them to be attacked by sharks while the siblings remain trapped inside.

Dakota witnesses Lisa’s ordeal from the second floor of her home. Because of her pregnancy, Lisa convinces Dakota to overcome her fear of going outside in order to rescue Lisa and escort her into the house.

Ron, Dee, and Will avoid the shark-infested floodwaters by standing on a kitchen counter island. Billy Olson unexpectedly surfaces from the water with one arm bitten off. From a welfare check, the children learn Billy and his wife only fostered them for a government stipend while forcing the kids to live in poverty. A physical struggle ensues. Ron and Dee kick Billy back into the water to be devoured by sharks.

Ron swims to the basement to collect steaks and dynamite that Billy secretly stored there. Avoiding a shark, Ron swims back to his brother and sister. The siblings make meat bombs out of the TNT and steak that they use to explode the sharks, eventually making their location safe to leave.

Dakota uses a small rowboat to collect supplies from a nearby store while Lisa goes into labor. Dakota’s home completely falls apart in the storm, forcing Lisa to swim away and give birth in the water. Lisa fends off attacking sharks to protect her newborn baby. Dakota returns to help fight the sharks.

Dale, Brian, Joe, and Doug arrive in a motorboat. Dale deploys a device that gets Nellie the great white to bite and kill the last bull shark threatening Lisa and Dakota, which in turn allows Dale to reunite with his niece.

With the danger passed, Lisa reconnects over the phone with her mother to let her know she and the baby are okay. Once the floodwaters recede enough, Ron, Dee, and Will leave the Olson home in a truck in search of a better life. Meanwhile, the harbor master sees another hurricane approaching.

Review:

Every year, it becomes harder and harder to tell shark movies apart because of how many of them already exist and how many keep coming. But there’s often at least one distinguishing characteristic that can click a bulb in the brain and make you say, “Oh right, that movie!”

The clue can be as simple as the star, like for instance, Jason Statham might be one way to remember “The Meg.” Mandy Moore might get you to “47 Meters Down” (review here), or the quick summary of “trapped in a diving cage underwater” works too. Same with “The Shallows” (review here), which can either be Blake Lively or “trapped on a surfboard.” “Sharknado” is just, well, “Sharknado” (review here).

How will viewers remember “Thrash?” The movie is a patchwork of setups and scenes that have been done to death before, so there’s not necessarily a clear way to uniquely tag it. Someone might say, “the one where rising floodwaters bring sharks to a small town,” except even that premise isn’t original. 2012’s “Bait” may have been confined to a single grocery store, but it’s practically the same idea. 2019’s “Crawl” (review here) has a nearly identical concept as well, only instead of sharks, that movie’s hurricane unleashed alligators. There’s so little of note in “Thrash,” viewers may not remember it at all.

“Thrash’s” expositional dialogue is out of control. If the Xanax bottle isn’t enough of an indicator that young Dakota suffers from anxiety, there’s a neighbor who explains why she has agoraphobia when he says, “I haven’t seen you in forever, not since your mom passed.” If you’re wondering why expectant single mother Lisa is rolling solo during a South Carolina storm, her mother conveniently sums up the situation by calling the baby daddy “the jerk who left his pregnant fiancée to become a professional poker player.” And if his shark talk doesn’t adequately identify his expertise, the camera gets a closeup on a boat bearing the words “Oceanic Research” so we know Dr. Dale Edwards is a marine biologist and not a tuna fisherman.

Suspense films like “Thrash” get hit harder by employing simple stereotypes instead of actualized characters because everyone’s fates are predetermined based on how their carboard personalities are cut. Between the abusive hillbillies who became foster parents for an easy welfare check or their neglected children, who is most likely to die a cheer-worthy death and who is most likely to survive? A random truck driver or the researcher desperate to reunite with his grieving niece? A random rescuer or the pregnant woman? Hearts have a hard time finding reasons to race when outcomes are obvious from the instant each person is introduced.

“Thrash” hamstrings its feeble horror in more ways than one, with the main way being that there isn’t even that much shark-related action to begin with. A majority of the movie’s attempts at tension come from water, waves, and threats of drowning, none of which are scarier than the pointed teeth of a great white’s maw. Of course, pregnant Lisa and agoraphobic Dakota are on a collision course where Dakota will have to overcome her fear to save the new mother who, also of course, will go into labor at a critical moment. In between, “Thrash” occasionally remembers to check in on its B arc to confirm that the three foster kids are still stuck on top of their kitchen counter, surrounded by a shark-infested flood on all sides.

The storyline involving the foster children isn’t a B plot so much as a completely separate storyline. None of the kids ever intersect with Lisa or Dakota. Their actions are entirely independent, and their conflict has its own resolution, which doesn’t impact anyone or anything else. In the meantime, Dr. Dale teams up with three other men to make his way to his niece, so when “Thrash” checks in on him, it’s to confirm he’s still heading toward Dakota and Lisa, and heading there at a speed that will serendipitously time his arrival with the climax.

That’s “Thrash” in a nutshell. The movie never tries very hard. On the few and far between occasions when a little oomph exists, it’s in service to a pat plot beat pulled from every other shark film that’s followed the same vanilla formula. The production itself doesn’t look cheap, but the script seems like it shortcut every creative corner possible, occasionally squeezing out laughs from well-timed gags involving the wicked foster father, though the tradeoff is shoving in a thread that has nothing to do with the others.

Maybe that’s the way to file away “Thrash” in the one’s memory bank: that middling shark movie that felt a little like an anthology for how little one thing had to do with another. Again though, that’s only if anyone finds “Thrash” worth remembering at all.

Review Score: 35