THE STORY – When a Category 5 hurricane decimates a coastal town, the storm surge brings devastation, chaos and something far more frightening: hungry sharks.
THE CAST – Phoebe Dynevor, Whitney Peak & Djimon Hounsou
THE TEAM – Tommy Wirkola (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 83 Minutes
While the allure of the high-stakes survival thriller is often found in its visceral chaos, Tommy Wirkola’s “Thrash” struggles to find its footing, ultimately feeling like a vessel with no meat on its bones. The film attempts to marry the catastrophic reality of a Category 5 hurricane with the primal terror of predatory sharks, but it often gets lost in the murky waters of its own execution.
The narrative introduces us to a disparate group of characters: a pregnant woman named Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), an agoraphobic young woman, Dakota (Whitney Peak), and her uncle Dale (Djimon Hounsou), a marine biologist. We also meet a trio of foster siblings, Dee, Ron, and Will, trapped in a home with the neglectful Mr. Olson, a man who dismisses the hurricane as a “bit of weather”. All find themselves at the mercy of a storm surge that proves to be a delicious buffet for the hungry sharks that wash into their coastal South Carolina town.
There is a poignant potential in exploring the characters’ specific struggles: how an evacuation order might paralyze someone dealing with agoraphobia, the vulnerability of foster children in a broken system, or a woman going into labor, hunted by apex predators in a rising tide. Yet, these plot points often feel like backstory forcibly added to generate interest in a script that remains stubbornly thin. The pregnant woman and foster kids’ plight, in particular, feels like a checkbox for “emotional weight” that the film doesn’t quite know how to carry.
Wirkola’s atmosphere-building is initially compelling. The film opens with the howling wind and clinical, foreboding text regarding the 250% increase in hurricane intensity since 1980. It’s a sharp observation that grounds the disaster in a not implausible scientific reality. The sound design is a highlight; when the storm makes landfall, the houses shift with a monstrous growl and cement levees crack with explosive force. Many of the film’s technical elements create a genuine sense of tension, such as when a character enters the water with the murky underwater cinematography keeping the audience on the edge of their seats, never knowing when a limb may be ripped to shreds.
However, as a survival thriller, the film is frequently undercut by dumb characters making dumb decisions. Whether it’s the adults dismissing the storm until it’s too late or Lisa’s calm exposition dump on the phone while the Interstate is closing, the lack of urgency often shatters the immersion. While these choices heighten the plot’s anxiety, they feel more like narrative convenience than a coherent dissection of human behavior under pressure. In the realm of survival horror, the threat is only as effective as the protagonist’s will to outwit it.
In comparison to Dynevor’s previous Netflix thriller “Fair Play,” the flaws in “Thrash” become even more apparent. The screenplay of “Fair Play” is something to admire; director Chloe Domont knows how to build tension, and it grows increasingly volatile, building slowly until it rises to volcanic heat and explodes in the most satisfying way. In that film, we are fully submerged in the lead’s plight, whereas “Thrash” lacks the ability to translate its technical world into an emotional one. While “Fair Play” used a masterful script to navigate the jagged edges of power and intimacy through an internal lens, Thrash relies almost entirely on an external, visceral threat. The action is undeniably intense as the waves run red and the sound of crunching bone terrifies, but it lacks the sophisticated vocabulary and thematic framing that make a thriller truly endure.
Despite the believable terror in the performances (Djimon Hounsou, in particular, always deserves better material), the film ultimately feels like a series of missed opportunities. It tries to be the next “Jaws,” but without a stronger commitment to its human drama, “Thrash” gets swallowed by the very waves it depicts. It provides the thrills, but leaves the audience hungry for a story with actual depth to its waters.
