Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water… the water comes to you! And boy, is it pissed! Modern shark movies seem to be no longer worried about finding ways to get potential victims into the ocean or onto the beach. Nah.  Nowadays, you’re not safe anywhere. Unfeasible natural disasters will fling these bad boys at you (Sharknado), tsunamis will catapult them into coastal shops (Bait 3D), and most recently, city rivers can cause the flooding of streets with ravenous predators (Netflix’s Under Paris). Speaking of Netflix, the most recent example of this “land-based” sharksploitation is now on the streaming channel for a global audience. This project has had an “interesting” journey before its release. In May 2024, it went into production as a survival thriller film titled Beneath the Storm as principal photography started in Melbourne, Australia. Then, in March 2025, the film was renamed to Shiver (collective name for a group of sharks). Then, in January 2026, deal wrangling took place, and the name was changed again to Thrash, and the rights to the film were transferred to Netflix, foregoing an intended theatrical release. However, genre writer/director Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow and a whole lot more) has remained as the man behind the project throughout, and we’ll see his upcoming Violent Night 2 in December of this year. Generally described as Crawl with sharks (and getting decidedly mixed reviews), it’s time to rate this storm.

 

After a quick climate change update, we’re taken to a (fictional) town named Annieville in South Carolina. Not Amityville. It’s not part of that franchise. However, it is due for some horror. Category 5-rated Hurricane Henry is bearing down on the coastal town with all due haste. Cue stock footage of storm damage and scenes of people hurriedly boarding up windows and leaving the suburbs. As always, though, and for typically convoluted reasons, some people are left behind to face nature’s fury. Dakota Edwards (Whitney Peak) is a young woman, prone to agoraphobia and panic attacks after the death of her mother, so she hunkers down. Her uncle (Djimon Hounsou as Dale Edward) is a marine researcher stationed elsewhere (Hmm… wonder if that occupation will come in handy) and becomes alarmed by the weather and increased shark activity in the area, so he sets out to rescue her. Meanwhile, Lisa Fields (Phoebe Dynevor, light years from Bridgerton) is heavily pregnant and made to go into work by her boss (Seriously, what an absolute shit!), before being caught in the hurricane’s clutches. Meanwhile (again), a group of foster kids (including Alyla Browne from Furiosa) are goofing around before being dragged home by their despicable MAGA foster parents, who mock the weather warnings. All of them will be menaced by a (a-ha!) shiver of bull sharks that have invaded the town after the levee walls were broken down and flooded the streets. Who will survive?

 

Perhaps the first thing to get out of the way is that this is in no way like Crawl. That much-loved thriller is deadly serious with plenty of genuine tension and gator-themed jump scares. By contrast, Thrash is a very silly “disaster movie”, with plenty of clichés and a scale that genuinely feels more at home on Netflix than on the big screen. And when we say “disaster movie” cliches, we mean it. A pregnant character on the verge of birthing (again, who is her boss?! He deserves a dry slap!) in extreme peril. An introverted character that must find their inner courage to save others. Innocent kids using inventive means to survive and find well-deserved emancipation. And a ton of red-shirt characters who are basically chum on two legs. Depending on your personal breaking point for unrealistic and undemanding stuff like this, this will either be a little bit of a letdown (especially considering Wirkola’s earlier work) or a throwaway bit of fun with the occasional wacky highlight and gory tidbit. We’re probably going to go with the latter, and we’ll explain why.

 

At times, it’s hard to know if some of the scenes are intentionally crass/hilarious or just misjudged moments that don’t quite work. Take the scene where the heavily pregnant Lisa says to someone, “I need you to go down there and see how big my opening is” (!?) “Thrash” starts with a semi-serious dramatic tone, but is then tonally all over the place once the floodwaters roll in. So, you’re not sure whether to be gripped with tension, laugh at the absurdity of it, or grimace as genuinely disturbing shark kills fill the screen. The best thing is to be like some of the buildings in Annieville and just go with the tidal flow. Enjoy it for what it is. A short, sharp, silly, shark film. It’s the sort of experience where a character says to someone, “Bet you didn’t see that on Shark Week!”, as a dynamite-stuffed T-Bone steak eviscerates a bull shark. Yes, really. People also say “Fuck” a lot. Which is understandable in the circumstances and does give Dynevor possibly the best one-liner she’ll ever have in her career (Hint: It goes “Mommy’s gotta….”). But it doesn’t make for nuanced dialogue or thrilling exchanges.

 

That all makes it sound pretty bad. And to be honest, some of it is. Some of the CG effects are pretty scrappy, and a few shots of the flooded town look really fake. But for all that, there are some great moments of quintessential exploitation and some really cool scenes. The sequence in a flooded basement looks amazingly convincing and sets a visual benchmark. This is echoed by some brilliant moments where sharks swim past first-floor windows or create menacing silhouettes in scuzzy water. Not to mention, fins skimming past kitchen worktops or through back doors. Okay, this sort of stuff has been done before in films like Deep Blue Sea or Bait 3D, but the aesthetic is nailed here for the most part, and it works pretty well. So does the occasional inventive idea, like creating shark decoys with a plastic bag and a vibrating toothbrush. Having said that, you do have to balance those moments with sequences obviously shot in infinity pools and “intense winds” being recreated with offscreen studio fans that barely flick the actor’s fringes.

 

To be fair, both Dynevor and Peak are good as the main leads and commit to the madcap perils (and questionable dialogue) that they endure. Whilst Hounsou can do the “noble guardian” stuff in his sleep, it feels like he’s barely in the film. He also has to tell a baffling story about hippos to accommodate some commentary about unconscious racism and provide the set-up for a stupid visual punchline at the climax. The narrative again harkens back to the cliches that you might find in a disaster movie. People getting their jumpers caught on hooks (twice!), characters stumbling across weapon caches, and constantly rising water that seems to go into pause mode when it reaches a trapped person’s chin. But if you can live with those, horror fans will be rewarded with the occasional gnarly shark scene, with the highlight being a swift shot of a hateful character having the top of their head bitten off! Otherwise, there are quite a few effective scenes where unlucky victims are chewed on graphically in waist-high water, and luckless individuals flail around, waving stumps where their limbs used to be.

 

It helps that the shiver of sharks is never anthropomorphised or given any qualities apart from being a force of nature. They’re on par with the hurricane itself, just a bit scarier when they appear out of nowhere and tear people apart. Aside from one or two (effective) underwater shots, we never get a clear glimpse of them either. This might just be to cut down on SFX, but it works in the same way that Jaws kept its villain out of sight for the most part. Not that we’re comparing these two films in terms of quality, of course. Just don’t expect big CG revelations (well, maybe one) or the sharks themselves to be identified with distinctive scars, vindictive meanness, or supernatural levels of injury resistance. Just plain ol’ Bull sharks for once.

 

And that, in a nutshell, is that. At only around 80 minutes (if you factor in the nothingness of the end credits), it’s a relatively quick and painless affair. You certainly shouldn’t be expecting Jaws or Crawl levels of tension (or quality), and there are certainly bones of contention to be gnawed at. It could have been better, and the tonal swerves are sometimes awkward or bizarre, with the humour feeling unintentional for some of the time. But for a quick fix of sharksploitation, it does the job and provides an easy piece of lightweight genre sustenance when you fancy a quick nibble, rather than a gourmet meal. Don’t expect something more than that, though. It’ll all be over in a “Thrash” …