Netflix’s Thrash opens with a hurricane tearing through Annieville, then leaves several residents behind as the floodwaters rise and sharks emerge. The result is a shark movie that is less Jaws than Crawl, and far less memorable than either.
Tommy Wirkola, who previously made Dead Snow and Violent Night, writes and directs a movie that never finds enough bite in its premise. Phoebe Dynevor plays heavily pregnant Lisa, Whitney Peak plays Dakota, an agoraphobe who has not left the house since her mother died, and a trio of foster kids are folded into the story as the town starts to vanish under water. But the sharks are described as intangible and offer little suspense, and the opening flood is awash in unpolished CGI, which drains away most of the threat before the movie has really begun.
That matters because Thrash is built to be a survival thriller, yet it keeps undercutting its own danger. The film is framed as a shark B-movie and is repeatedly measured against Jaws and Crawl, but it never earns those comparisons. Instead, it comes off as mostly watered-down chum: thin and silly even by the loose standards of the genre it is trying to join.
The final act reaches for spectacle with dynamite explosions, maternal rage and Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” a combination so unrestrained it almost feels like a different movie has burst in. That late blast of energy is the closest Thrash comes to shaking off its own inertia, but it arrives after too much of the story has already washed away. The question is not whether the movie goes big at the end. It does. The real question is whether any of it sticks, and the answer is no.