Thrash, 2026.
Written and Directed by Tommy Wirkola.
Starring Phoebe Dynevor, Whitney Peak, Djimon Hounsou, Gemma Dart, Alyla Browne, Matt Nable, Amy Mathews, Elijah Ungvary, Sami Afuni, Jon Prasida, Dante Ubaldi, and Stacy Clausen.
SYNOPSIS:
When a Category 5 hurricane decimates a coastal town, the storm surge brings devastation, chaos and something far more frightening: hungry sharks.
Writer/director Tommy Wirkola is upping the scale right at the beginning of his minimal-location, natural-disaster survival flick, Thrash , with a supporting character announcing that this is a Category 5 hurricane that will look like a 6, headed for a small South Carolina town. The film doesn’t stop there, also throwing in bullhead sharks, a great white, and some impressively crafted environments that turn the home’s interior and its objects into life rafts. Outside, the streets are flooded to the point where they’re essentially swimming pools for cars. And while some of that CGI and green screen work isn’t entirely convincing, it’s more about what the filmmaker has cooked up for the characters as they navigate these circumstances and try to make it out alive.
It is also smart then that Tommy Wirkola doesn’t restrict himself to one protagonist or even one group, introducing the very pregnant Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor) on a long drive home caught up in the catastrophically bad weather, a trio of children (one of them played by young Furiosa, Alyla Browne) stuck in an abusive foster home that quickly turns into a comedy of comeuppance with hick guardian Billy (Matt Nable) clearly coming across as a dimwitted, climate-change-denier type who deserves what’s coming to him for ignoring every media warning, and a grieving, depressive Dakota (Whitney Peak) going through one of those clichéd arcs of helping others to relearn the meaning of being alive, all while occasionally maintaining contact with her marine biologist uncle (Djimon Hounsou) who is on the way via boat alongside reporters to rescue his knees from mother nature and her bloodthirsty creatures.
By virtue of having so many characters to cut back and forth between, the familiarity and surface-level nature of these stories is masked, in turn, by a focus on surviving the dangers both outside and inside. This mashup also means there is a variety of characters between those we want to see live and those we eagerly await becoming shark food. In the hands of Tommy Wirkola, who routinely works in a darkly comedic tone, that also benefits the film in that it’s comfortable leading into predictability and not taking itself too seriously (Lisa’s choice of song during the outrageous birthing scene is one such example that this is a filmmaker and ensemble simply having fun).
There are also some genuinely creative, perilous situations the locals are put into here, such as one in which a character becomes trapped in a car as the water level rises from inside, with several others attempting to free her. Similarly, there are tense moments involving cruel humans, who potentially might be more dangerous than the sharks in the case of the three children. It is also intriguing that such a natural disaster and life-threatening scenario could be what they need to set them free from such awful living conditions.
Look, there isn’t a whole lot to say here; Thrash is barely 80 minutes of confident absurdity that isn’t even sunk by mediocre visual effects. Yes, these characters are paper-thin with storylines ripped from other movies. However, the film also has a wicked sense of humor, creatively uses its limited, morphed environments, and introduces dynamite with ingenuity. It thrashes and throttles enough.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
