Synopsis: When a Category 5 hurricane decimates a coastal town, the storm surge brings devastation, chaos and something far more frightening: hungry sharks.
Stars: Phoebe Dynevor, Whitney Peak, Djimon Hounsou, Matt Nable, Andrew Lees, Alyla Browne, Stacy Clausen, Dante Ubaldi
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Rated: R
Running Length: 86 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: Tommy Wirkola’s long-delayed hurricane-and-sharks thriller finally crashes onto Netflix, and it’s a pulpy, efficient creature feature that takes its B-movie bones seriously enough to work. Phoebe Dynevor sells every improbable second.
Thrash Review: Chum Bucket List
Every shark movie since 1975 has been chasing Jaws, and every shark movie since 1975 has come up short — some nobly, some with titles like Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus. If you’ve read anything on this site before, you know where I land on the subgenre. A quick search of “shark” here will tell you how forgiving I am with films about the maneaters of the deep. My favorite movie is Jaws, and I’m hopelessly committed to giving anything with a dorsal fin a fair shake. So I come to Thrash, Tommy Wirkola‘s hurricane-and-sharks creature feature, with genuine goodwill intact. It has taken a while to arrive — four title changes, a pivot from Sony theatrical to Netflix streamer, and enough behind-the-scenes rearrangement to keep the industry gossips busy — but here we are.
Good news: it mostly earns it.
A Storm Surge of Title Changes
Thrash was The Rising, then Beneath the Storm, then Shiver, then Thrash. The premise, once you get past the rebranding carousel, is actually elegant: a Category 5 hurricane hits the coastal town of Annieville, South Carolina, the sea wall gives out, and the floodwaters that inundate downtown bring a pack of hungry bull sharks along for the ride. A pregnant great white named Nellie is also cruising the neighborhood, though she’s mostly window-shopping.
A split-open tanker truck belonging to the local McKay’s Meats plant (a playful tip of the hat to producer Adam McKay, whose Oscar-winning name is strangely absent from most of the marketing) turns the flood into a buffet. Dinner is served.
Dynevor Sells the Improbable
Phoebe Dynevor (Anniversary) plays Lisa, a pregnant transplant whose fiancé bailed before the baby arrived. Now having to face single parenthood, she’s late getting out of work, leaving her stranded when the interstate closes. Dakota (Whitney Peak, Hocus Pocus 2) is a teenager with agoraphobia holed up in her late mother’s house, waiting for her marine biologist uncle Dale (Djimon Hounsou, The King’s Man) to arrive by boat from two hours up the coast. Across town, three siblings — Ron (Stacy Clausen), Dee (Alyla Browne, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), and Will (Dante Ubaldi) — are trapped with foster parents who’ve been pocketing their government subsidy checks and feeding the kids Wonder Bread while eating steak.
After such a strong turn in Fair Play, Dynevor should have had a bigger theatrical breakout by now, and she does committed, unfussy work here, even saddled with the kind of pregnancy-in-peril plot mechanics that have been on a slow boil in disaster movies for decades. She commits to the physical demands of the role with a ferocity the script doesn’t always match, and she never lets you catch her performing. A sequence late in the film is highly improbable, silly even, but somehow Dynevor makes it go down easier.
Peak (strong in last year’s dull but watchable Eye for an Eye) and Browne (memorable against the giant spider in the nail-biter Sting) give her terrific company. One of the film’s strongest sequences sets three kids inside a house as the water rises against their huge front window, fins circling outside, pressure building against the glass. Clean, effective, nearly wordless. It’s the perfect mix of Thrash‘s concept and old-school tension.
Wirkola Knows the Assignment
Wirkola directed Dead Snow, its zombie-Nazi sequel, and 2022’s Violent Night, so he understands how to blend gruesome with goofy without tipping into camp. Thrash mostly holds that balance. The attacks are fast, mean, and economical — Wirkola and editor Martin Stoltz seem to know that a shark kill loses its teeth the longer the camera stays on it. Cinematographer Matthew Weston finds dread in the static moments and stages a few of the better jump scares I’ve had in a streaming horror in a while.
Where the film falters is where most modern shark films sink: the CGI. The practical effects work, and there’s more of it here than usual, is properly unsettling. The digital shots tip into cartoon territory just often enough to snap you out of the action. How is a 1975 mechanical shark that frequently broke down still more convincing than one rendered in a computer in 2026? I genuinely don’t have an answer at this point. Credit nonetheless to production designer David Ingram, art director Jacinta Leong, and set decorator Lisa Brennan for the technical feat of engineering sets that can be flooded, drained, and flooded again for additional takes without ever losing the illusion of a real neighborhood in peril.
Swim at Your Own Risk
Not everything lands. Hounsou gets handed a clunker about a hippo attack, a monologue that would play considerably better if it were premiering alongside Hungry, this June’s forthcoming killer-hippo feature, which already owes this movie dinner. A few of the one-liners I’m sure producers were hoping would be the film’s viral catchphrase clang too.
And yet, the film moves. At 86 minutes, it’s lean by design, and it never overstays its welcome. Against the bottom-shelf shark content cluttering streaming bargain bins, and I’ve seen a lot of it, Thrash is playing in an entirely different league. It has a real cast, a director with genre range, and enough money behind the water to make the peril convincing.
Sony dropped it from the theatrical schedule; Netflix caught it on the way down. I’m glad someone did. Thrash isn’t going on anyone’s all-time shark-movie list, but it’s not begging for scraps from Jaws fans either — it’s confidently ordering its own plate.
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