How refreshing for a disaster film to really flex its R-rating, not just with blood and guts and bone-baring stumps (sharks, man), but characters not afraid to say “holy fucking shit” when the time calls for it or “he got my fucking arm” when a shark, you know, gets an arm. These are the little touches, the sparkles, the cherries on top, and audiences might not realize how important they really are until they see them on the screen, even if it is the small screen that so often hosts Netflix‘s original films.
Such are the most immediate charms of Tommy Wirkola’s “Thrash” (formerly known as both “Beneath the Storm” and “Shiver,” terrible titles all). A mash-up of classic disaster flick (read: hurricane) and creature feature (again, sharks), “Thrash” is the latest in an odd string of action films that inject wild animals into already fraught situations. Like “Burning Bright” (hurricane and tiger) and “Crawl” (hurricane and alligators), Wirkola’s latest is set during a natural disaster (what is it with hurricanes, you guys?) and only amps up the action with the addition of toothy baddies.
Sharks are, of course, a much more natural fit for all of this than tigers.
And nature? Well, she’s pissed. The film, written and directed by Wirkola, plays a bit of its hand early, as the its title cards tell us both a) it’s produced by Adam McKay and Kevin Messick and b) maybe climate change is to blame for what we’re about to see unfold, if only because audiences would be pretty blinkered to not wonder about its opening card, which notes the increased intensity, frequency, and duration of hurricanes since 1980. Huh! Wonder why!
Set in the fictional coastal town of Annieville, South Carolina (the film was shot on a lot in Australia, and it’s pretty impressive by those metrics), the film opens with the massive Hurricane Henry mere hours from making landfall. The film is a beast (it could be called a Category 6, if that existed, one side character muses), and it’s only gathering more strength as it goes.
In its path? Young Dakota (Whitney Peak), who has barely left her house since her mother died and doesn’t seem emotionally able to evacuate just now. There’s also heavily pregnant Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), whose unseen dirtbag ex recently abandoned her and their soon-to-be-born son to become a DJ. And there’s a trio of young siblings (“Leviticus” breakout Stacy Clausen, plus Alyla Browne and Dante Ubaldi) whose shitty foster parents can’t even be relied on to proper feed the sibs, let alone care for them during a hurricane.
Just outside town, marine biologist Dr. Dale Edwards (Djimon Hounsou, always able to add gravitas wherever he goes) is tracking both the storm and his niece, who just so happens to be Dakota. Also incidentally: Dale’s speciality is sharks, but even he’s baffled to see an uptick in shark attacks during the onset of the storm. Whatever could those big baddies be doing? (Long, dramatic pause for the film to also introduce, stay with us here, a shark that Dale knows and has long been tracking, who seems all too eager to get in on the action.)
“Thrash” whips us through all these introductions and connections with lightning speed, all the better to get down to business (hurricane, sharks) and maximize the film’s blessedly tight running time of 86 minutes. How these characters will connect — or don’t, as is the case with the Olsen siblings, who never meet any of the film’s other characters, oddly enough — follows the expected beats of the genre. Lisa basically washes up on Dakota’s doorstep, while Dale and his team attempt to make their way to a flooded Annieville. Who will live? Who will die? Who will be eaten (perhaps even repeatedly) by a shark?
For all its dead-expected outcomes, “Thrash” does still find plenty of tension in both big and little moments. The Olsen kiddos trying to close their front door to keep the sharks out is just as well-shot and grimly hilarious as Lisa readying to give birth as the floodwaters rise. And Wirkola doesn’t shy away from injecting some truly human drama into his shark hurricane movie, as “Thrash” also lightly interrogates the impact of disaster on everyday people. Who stays? Who helps? Who really needs to learn how to swim? For all its potential silliness, real characters populate these bloody waters.
Thank goodness for that, because the sharks themselves — even Dale’s big ol’ great white, who we learn later on is pregnant, just like Lisa, which made this critic pray for some truly silly plot movements that did not pan out — don’t offer much in the way of personality. Mostly, they jump out of the water for a chomp here, a chomp there, a chomp everywhere, before swimming off to do more biting elsewhere.
Still, “Thrash” looks quite impressive for a film shot in a literal parking lot, and the small-town of Annieville sure looks believable enough (and believably flooded). Overhead shots are mixed with what appears to be real footage of out-of-control hurricane action, and it’s all foreboding and scary enough to not even need finned baddies swimming in and out of frame. But, yes, frankly more shark action would be welcome in this film about sharks. As a basic disaster flick? “Thrash” works, and offers up less than 90 minutes of admirably silly and occasionally chilling action, even if it could stand to take a bigger bite out of the story.
Grade: C+
“Thrash” is now streaming on Netflix.
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