Netflix Thrash review: Phoebe Dynevor is stranded in a storm of tired clichés and recycled scares
Sometimes, you really get the feeling of Deja-meh. I’ve seen this before. I’ve heard it all before and I got bored before, even it’s wrapped in different films and shows.
In Thrash, a group of teenagers watch rising floodwaters swallow their home during a violent hurricane. The first reaction is a scatter of stock curse words that now feel like the default setting for every second film and series. It’s oddly reminiscent of Stranger Things Season 5, where Erica sees a recovering Max in a wheelchair after 18 months in a coma and responds, with the same recycled expletive toolkit.
At this point, it feels less like character writing and more like a shared dialogue template being passed around writers’ rooms. Come on, people, aren’t there more forms of expression? At this point, I’ll be grateful if someone says ‘Blimey’ in a Netflix thriller, or dials it back a few notches with ‘tails and whiskers!’
That would actually be refreshing, somehow, anything to break the monotony of staid dialogues. As it stands, you can predict the emotional beats from a mile away, and even terror starts to feel a little pre-packaged. These are just some of the problems that plague Thrash, despite the presence of Phoebe Dynevor, who can’t quite hold back the tide of contrived storytelling (forgive the puns—they will keep coming).
The premise: in the fictional town of Annieville, S.C., a hurricane triggers catastrophic flooding, and with it, sharks that have apparently RSVP’d to the disaster. And so, chomps, splashes, and the occasional human becoming an unfortunate snack. It’s very much a slasher film.
People disappear underwater, leaving behind only bloodied afterimages, while others attempt to fight off sharks as if they’re mildly inconvenient golden retrievers. And yet, amid the spirals, the film insists on layering in themes of parenthood, isolation, orphanhood, and the failures of the care system. It’s a lot.
Dynevor plays Lisa, a heavily pregnant woman who has already ignored multiple opportunities to evacuate long before the floods arrive. The film further flattens its narrative with heavy-handed exposition, just in case anyone wandered in mid-scroll. In Lisa’s first phone call with her mother, we’re essentially handed her entire backstory: cheating fiancé, emotional baggage, the works. Somehow, this happens while her mother enjoys crystal-clear HD video calling in the middle of a hurricane, right before Lisa gets dramatically entangled in a tree jutting through her car. (If this is an advertisement for good connection, hand it over).
Still, Dynevor commits fully, and one of the film’s more unexpectedly effective moments is, yes, a birth scene. Of course, there’s a birth scene. In a disaster movie, if there’s danger, there’s usually also childbirth. Dynevor sells it, too, including the line that feels engineered for virality: “Mommy’s got to go and fight some sharks.”
She’s supported by Dakota (Whitney Peak), who arrives with a few conveniently timed, almost supernatural bursts of capability.
Thrash does have atmosphere, no doubt. The towering walls of water are more unnerving than the sharks themselves. But the tension quickly turns soggy, because the film never quite decides what it wants to be and eventually, neither does the viewer.
