‘Thrash’ Review: Sharks Invade a Flooded Town in Netflix’s B-Movie Spectacle

There are many ways to approach a natural disaster like a hurricane-driven flood. On one end, there are documentaries focused on the human toll of such events. On the other, big-budget action spectacles turn them into high-stakes dramatic narratives built on suspense. Somewhere along the line, a third path emerged—what could be called “sharksploitation,” a subgenre that clearly traces back to Jaws but really took off over the past 15 to 20 years with hits like Sharknado, Shark Attack, and the Mega Shark franchise, among many others.

These films embrace a sense of humor and irreverence, building increasingly absurd and exaggerated scenarios around shark attacks. Thrash isn’t, strictly speaking, part of that lineage. While it does feature sharks—and they will eventually become the primary threat—Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola initially frames the film as a fairly classic disaster movie. It begins with Hurricane Henry bearing down on the coast of South Carolina, with every indication that it will cause widespread devastation.

Amid the mass evacuation, a handful of characters remain behind for various reasons. Dakota (Whitney Peak), a teenager, decides to stay home for personal reasons, convinced her two-story house will keep her safe. Out at sea, her uncle Dale, a marine biologist played by Djimon Hounsou, grows increasingly worried and sets out to find her. There’s also Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), heavily pregnant and abandoned by her partner, whose escape attempt is cut short by a freak accident that leaves her trapped against a fallen tree. And then there are three siblings (Stacy Clausen, Alyla Browne, Dante Ubaldi), stuck with a pair of neglectful adoptive parents who seem entirely unfazed by the looming storm.

The town is eventually overrun as floodwaters breach the levees—and, as if that weren’t enough, sharks begin swimming through the murky streets. At that point, the film veers into unmistakable B-movie territory: part ridiculous, part playful, more entertaining than genuinely frightening. It leans less on sustained tension than on the sheer, often ludicrous shock of its premise. Some of the characters gradually intersect, some inevitably becoming prey, as they scramble—sometimes successfully—to survive this double-layered catastrophe.

Thrash never takes itself too seriously. One can glimpse, beneath the digitally rendered destruction, the outline of countless untold human dramas—but the film has little interest in exploring them. Instead, over a brisk 80 minutes, it strings together a series of action-driven survival set pieces, most of them revolving around narrowly avoiding becoming shark bait while fleeing or sheltering from the raging storm. It’s not easy—and Wirkola knows that juggling these escalating threats is enough to hold the viewer’s attention for exactly as long as needed.

There’s nothing more—or less—than that in this Netflix iteration of the seemingly endless sharksploitation wave.