A very silly, very implausible, and kinda fun Netflix backed incorporation of flooding and sharks. Written and directed by DEAD SNOW’s Tommy Wirkola, it’s by no means the first splash-a-thon made by Netflix (I can think of two other equally dumb examples: 1924’s UNDER PARIS and the following year’s GREAT FLOOD). If THRASH stands out at all, it’s due to the engagingly nutty POSEIDON ADVENTURE-meets-JAWS conception.
The setting is Annieville, a coastal town in South Carolina where a monster hurricane is about to make landfall. An overheard radio broadcast proclaims “This storm is nothing to mess around with!,” but none of the townspeople seem to take it very seriously. Typical of the overall response is that of Billy (Matt Nable), a redneck family man who disregards evacuation orders, and so ends up trapped in his home.
Dr. Dale Edwards (Djimon Hounsou) is a sea-bound widower who’s been tracking Nelly, an especially ravenous Great White shark. Edwards’ daughter Dakota (Whitney Peak) is stuck in town, as is Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), a young pregnant woman who becomes trapped in her car when the storm makes landfall. This entails mass flooding, through which Nelly and her brood make their way into the town-space, and embark on an all-out chomp-a-thon. Further complication occurs when Lisa goes into labor, and the non-medically trained Dakota, who rescues Lisa from her submerged car, is called upon to help deliver the baby.
Technically the film is top-notch, and certainly above average for a Netflix production (I’ll credit the other major production entity Sony). The cinematography of Matt Weston (another DEAD SNOW returnee) has an appropriately harsh, gritty tinge (and imparts some terrific underwater imagery) and the enveloping sound design of Bryan Bowen helps immeasurably in selling the film’s conception. Also faring quite well (surprisingly so) are the Lloyd Finnemore supervised special effects.
It’s all tied together by the direction of Tommy Wirkola, which isn’t Spielberg-worthy but does the job. Wirkola’s screenplay is what puts the material over, or at least near, the top, with an Edgar Wright-worthy sense of perversity and subversion—as in the sight of a submerged Dakota avoiding a shark by spreading her legs and allowing it to swim between them (I could, however, have done without cutesy lines like “I bet you never saw this on SHARK WEEK!”). Such things severely affect the story’s plausibility, although plausibility clearly wasn’t something to which Wirkola paid much heed. THRASH is far from award-worthy, and its makers were evidently well aware of that fact.
Vital Statistics
THRASH
Netflix/Sony Pictures
Director/Screenplay: Tommy Wirkola
Producers: Adam McKay, Kevin Messick, Tommy Wirkola
Cinematography: Matt Weston
Editing: Martin Stoltz
Cast: Phoebe Dynevor, Whitney Peak, Djimon Hounsou, Matt Nable, Alyla Browne, Stacy Calusen, Dante Ubaldi, Sami Afuni, Tyler Coppin, Adam Dunn, Chai Hansen, Annabel Mullion, Bert LaBronte, Sian Luxford, Amy Matthews, Josh McConville, Aaliyah Nginyo, Akosia Sabet, Elija Ungvary