THRASH (NETFLIX) (2026)

SYNOPSIS: When a Category 5 hurricane decimates a coastal town, the storm surge brings devastation, chaos and something far more frightening: hungry sharks.

MOVIE REVIEW:

If you are too young to know, there’s a 2012 Australia–Singapore co-production called Bait starring Adrian Pang and Qi Yuwu, involving a tsunami and great white sharks. Then there’s Crawl (2019), a horror creature feature with convincing, menacing alligators and a hurricane.

Thrash basically retains the same formula as those titles, but with little creativity or surprise.

Directed and written by Tommy Wirkola (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Violent Night), Thrash is set in South Carolina (though filmed in Australia), where a “Category 6” Hurricane Henry is bearing down on a small coastal town. Before the storm breaks the levees unleashing ocean water along with a few bull sharks and one big great white, there’s the main human characters, or “bait” in this case.

Let’s see: there’s a pregnant woman, Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor); a teenager named Dakota (Whitney Peak), who suffers from anxiety; her uncle Dale (Djimon Hounsou), who happens to be a marine biologist; and three foster siblings who suffered under the hands of an abusive couple. Again, we already know what’s going to happen, we just want to know how.

As with most shark movies (except Jaws), none of the characters here are particularly interesting. Other than giving a random speech about hippopotamuses, Djimon Hounsou’s Dale is mostly forgotten. The three foster siblings are stuck on a kitchen table for most of the film and barely interact with the rest of the cast. That leaves Lisa and Dakota, who, to be fair, carry most of the movie in full survival mode as Dakota tries to evacuate Lisa and her soon-to-be-born child.

At least with movies like Hansel & Gretel and Violent Night, Wirkola knows how to deliver B-movie thrills and fun. Thrash, on the other hand, struggles to maintain momentum and can’t decide whether it wants to be intense or campy, despite its slim runtime. And what’s with that Jurassic Park-style cop-out ending? That pretty much seals the movie’s fate. No wonder it went through multiple title changes, skipped a theatrical release, and was dumped straight onto Netflix.

While Thrash is not exactly trash, it’s not a shark movie that rises above the average either. The CGI is so-so, the gory scenes are more laughable than shocking, and in the end, it’s just another shark movie of the year or even the month.  

MOVIE RATING:

Review by Linus Tee