It’s not hard to see why “Thrash” went straight to streaming instead of its planned theatrical release. It’s a shark movie set during a hurricane, and no, I’m not talking about “Sharknado.” If you want laughs, there are many “Sharknado” movies to choose from. “Thrash” tries its best to play it straight, but leaves in some jokes for levity. The tonal shift and the many, many plot holes, however, might end up drawing more laughs than “Sharnado” if you’re willing to coast along with characters that end up losing a hand, an arm, and even a butt cheek (I warned you).
Warning: Spoilers Below.
This movie is probably going to go down in history as the movie where Phoebe Dynevor’s character, Lisa, gives birth during a hurricane surrounded by sharks and ends up cutting her own umbilical cord with a rotting piece of wood, which is a sentence that I can’t believe I just wrote. Her mother’s comment about having a “water birth” in her character’s opening scene definitely jumped the shark, along with pretty much every other joke in this movie. Her pregnancy storyline here is actually pretty ironic if you’ve watched the first season of “Bridgerton,” which is also streaming on Netflix if you want to watch something with a little bit more substance.
Through a series of very unlikely events, she ends up getting trapped in her car by a tree branch that almost made me feel like I was watching a “Final Destination” movie. But she survives this, and two men quickly show up to rescue her.
Cue the sharks.
Since they quickly become shark food, Lisa is rescued by a girl named Dakota, who clearly doesn’t have her life together. In her opening scene, she decides to walk to the grocery store right before the hurricane hits because she realizes she’s out of food. Turns out, she’s afraid of water, and while a good-meaning neighbor tries to get her to leave with them, we never actually see how that pans out. It looks like she’s going to have a panic attack, and then the camera cuts to her back inside her apartment.
This isn’t the only time the camera decides to play fast and loose with the rules in this universe. After climbing onto a shed in order to cut through the branch trapping Lisa with a kitchen knife (yes, really), Dakota is somehow strong enough to lift the very pregnant woman up out of the car. They then look at the shed and up at the second-floor window. They’re surrounded by sharks. How are they going to get up there?
Well, that doesn’t matter, because the next shot shows the two women climbing in through the window. Like I said before, if you’re hoping for any sort of logic in this movie, you’re going to have a bad time.
Logic? Gone. Butt Cheek? Also Gone
The same can be said for three foster kids, who are given nothing but stale white bread to eat while their guardians feast on steak and beer that’s hidden in the refrigerator (that will come into play later). Although the kids are more likable than some who appear in horror movies, it might just be because the parents are so unlikable, almost comedically so.
There’s a scene in which the father tries to escape in his car, which is outfitted with a snorkel, only to have his hand bitten off. After he loses that, his butt cheek is the next to go, and he’s slowly dragged out into the water. How he shows up twenty minutes later inside the house with the children, without a hand or a butt cheek, is not a plot hole worth dwelling on. He doesn’t make it to the end of the movie, but you already knew that from the opening scene. The movie doesn’t exactly make it a secret that the bad guys, who are very upfront and obvious about the fact that they are terrible people, are going to be shark chow before the credits roll.
I won’t reveal the end of the movie, but let’s just say it involves Dakota’s uncle, who is actually a marine biologist tracking the bull sharks that emerge throughout the movie (because of course he is). He also has a tracker on the great white shark, and their later encounter leads to what might be the movie’s best scene. Unfortunately, it takes place less than five minutes before the credits roll.
In the end, the most believable thing about “Thrash” is that it bypassed theaters entirely. I guess some disasters are best kept confined to the small screen.
