Since 2022, there has been a potentially profitable deal between Sony and Netflix for both sides: The streaming giant is putting billions of dollars on the table in order to be able to include the Japanese company’s cinema productions in the streaming subscription program first after they have been screened. For example, “Caught Stealing”, “Karate Kid: Legends” or “Anaconda” often ended up on Netflix just a few months after their theatrical release. And in the event that Sony gets cold feet about a project originally planned for the big screen, there will be a grateful and well-paying buyer who will release the film directly as a streaming original instead. The animation phenomenon “KPop Demon Hunters” has already landed on Netflix with its incredible 300 million views in the first three months.
The people in charge at Sony apparently couldn’t really do much with Tommy Wirkola’s survival thriller about bull sharks during a hurricane. This was initially evident in the multiple title changes after the first announcement in May 2024: The project was initially supposed to be called quite generically “The Rising” before it went into production as “Beneath The Storm” and has since been cryptically renamed “Shiver”. Now the film has been released directly on Netflix under the final title “Thrash” (= “to really beat someone up”). “I now (…) just call it ‘the shark movie’ because it has had so many titles,” revealed the leading actress Phoebe Dynevor, known from the hit series “Bridgerton,” in an interview. But the self-irony doesn’t help: “Thrash” comes across as disappointingly half-baked with its often involuntary humor and mediocre effects, especially towards the end.
Not only is Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor) trapped in her sinking car surrounded by sharks – she’s also about to give birth to her baby.
Marine researcher Dr. is watching with concern. Dale Edwards (Djimon Hounsou) and his colleagues watch the monstrous Hurricane Henry race towards the small US coastal town of Annieville. After the first tidal waves break through the dams, Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), who is heavily pregnant and trapped in her car, and Edwards’ claustrophobic niece Dakota (Whitney Peak) fight for survival. To make matters worse, hungry bull sharks are also looking for human snacks in the already life-threatening water masses. Dale, who is initially around 160 kilometers away, does everything he can to get to Dakota’s help in time…
In any case, there is hardly any tension
At first glance, that sounds like a pretty functional story that should at least be good for a few exciting moments – or should it? In fact, “Dead Snow” mastermind Tommy Wirkola, who was also responsible for the script, wastes all suspense potential. When Dakota gathers her courage and balances from the window of her house over a corrugated iron hut floating in the water to Lisa’s car pierced by a branch, suggestive scenes with a little more fin action and dramatic music a la “Jaws” would certainly have worked wonders. However, these are missing here, as is the (certainly no less arduous) journey back from the wheeled vehicle to the house – a wasted opportunity that doesn’t make you feel excited, but at best makes you shrug your shoulders.
The same goes for an idiot Jump scare in a silting parallel plot, when three orphans celebrate the death of their loveless redneck foster father before he emerges behind them from the sometimes quite muddy animated masses of water – even though he had previously been nibbled on by the predatory fish in a completely different place (out in the shed).
It’s actually a cool idea when shark fins swim past the window in a disaster movie. Unfortunately, “Thrash” makes shockingly little of it.
Even if the catastrophe setting and the gloomy atmosphere are initially correct, the storm of the century scenario, which is only sporadically enriched with shark fins, ripples along rather leisurely and largely without surprises. It is only in the final quarter of an hour that the beer seriousness that had been celebrated in overly drawn-out dialogues is broken up by a series of over-the-top absurdities.
Lisa, who had previously been in contractions, delivers her child herself within a few seconds after a difficult escape from a collapsing house – hey presto – and her two companions in fate receive animal support that is as crazy as it is poorly tricked at the last second during a bull shark attack. Only then – and thus far too late – does “Thrash” finally leave the first “h” in its title aside and stand by the “trash” that it should have celebrated so uninhibitedly beforehand.
Conclusion: A very serious catastrophe stew from Sony’s leftover ramp, which even the sharks thrown into the threat mix don’t add the necessary spice. “Thrash” is simply incredibly unexciting for long stretches and only begins to at least begin to achieve its trashy potential in the final quarter of an hour.