Thrash (2026)
If the flood doesn't kill you...
Tonight's movie is going to be a little bit different, Not different than what I do a lot of the time, but more different than what we've been on our current streak of. Although we've had quite a few action movies on the docket as of late, a new movie came out that I only heard about a couple of weeks or so before it came out, and it fits my alley of videos that I like to watch. At least videos I like to watch in a given situation. That situation is usually when I'm in a hot tub or any kind of a body of water doing nothing but within range of something I can watch stuff on, like a TV or a computer. It's what I like to call crappy shark movie time. Not all of the movies that I watch with sharks in them are bad, but I will always call them that anyways just because it's a force of habit at this point. I could watch Jaws while I was in a tub and I would still call it crappy shark movie time. Anyways, what's worse than sharks in a tornado? Something more believable? A hurricane that brought sharks. Tonight we check out Thrash.
The problem with living by the coast is it often puts you in an area where big storms can be big problems. In this case, there's a hurricane rolling in, and what started as a small storm has quickly ramped up to 1 heck of a Superstorm. The town it's rolling up on is probably rather prepared in the sense that everybody is smart enough to leave that can because they're used to it. But there's some stragglers for one reason or another. Some of those reasons are because they're stupid. Others of those reasons is things like crippling anxiety or being from somewhere that doesn't get these storms and not realizing how bad it's going to be. It's all reasonable, although maybe not necessarily intelligent as to why the characters that are going to be in our situation are going to be in our situation. What situation exactly am I talking about? Well, when the hurricane finally hits the landfall and starts causing some damage, it also happens to break the barriers that are keeping out a lot of all those ocean waters. And you know what comes in with all those ocean waters? Yeah, you got it. Sharks. Now not only is nature trying to kill them, but nature's little kids are trying to eat the people that are still there. Three different main groups with their own distinct problems. But also with the shared problem of there being a shark involved in those distinct problems. Now we're fighting for survival. Will they make it out or will the sharks win as they do what nature has made them do? Solve the issue of what's for dinner?
Given that there's a bunch of different groups of people here, there's actually quite a few actors that you could kind of consider main characters. There's a group of researcher types who are mostly kind of there to sort of explain a few things here and there as they try to get to other characters involved in the story. There's a foster group with kind of jerk foster parents. There's also a young lass with some real bad anxiety after losing both of her parents. And then there's a pregnant lady who was very ill prepared for the situation that the has descended upon this town. Each has its own little situation that it's in, each has varied levels of acting, and honestly, they do a pretty decent job. It's nothing too crazy impressive, but it's good enough that it doesn't really feel like people are phoning it in or that they don't have any clue what they're doing. The weakest link would probably I would say be some of the kids stuff, but at the same time it's still leagues better than what you used to get back in the day when it came to kid actors. There are some highlights in there when it comes to the acting, but at the same time it's kind of more like a hit or miss scene sort of situation when it comes to highlights. A person will do good job, maybe they'll have some decent chemistry, but it's nothing that afterwards you're thinking about it long afterwards and looking up the actors names and sticking them into your head for future reference. Again, nothing against the actors, I think everybody here does a pretty Dang good job. It's more just probably the fact that it's another disaster shark movie. If you want to compare it to the acting in something like. Sharknado, then this movie is definitely in a different league, in a good way.
Characters, as kind of alluded to, are plentiful in how many there are. Development wise, maybe, maybe a little bit different. There's one of the main cast that really feels like they have any sort of real development, and that would be our one riddled with anxiety who kind of has to overcome that to help out the one that's pregnant. The pregnant one really doesn't feel necessarily like she goes from one spot to another. It doesn't really have necessarily an arc there, but there is the extra layer of her being pregnant and you know, getting ready to pop out a baby. The kids, it's more about the dynamic between them and the foster parents and the fact that the foster parents are kind of really bad foster parents and seem to be more in it just for the money. It kind of leads more to some commentary because of them, probably more so than the other characters that are in the movie, so they do bring that to it. That said though, it's kind of I guess arguably generic with how those characters exist. The scientist types, you know, researchers do have some nice back and forth with a couple of reporter types that go throughout the movie and you kind of get to see that develop a little bit - but it's also largely something that you could totally forget even had any kind of a development by the end of the movie comes around, so I think it's fair to say that although they might have some things to comment on, the characters themselves aren't too interested in going out of the way to make it like some kind of a super character study sort of movie. Which is fair to pretty much anybody's expectations of and the movie, because who's thinking that they're going to get that going in and watching a movie about sharks that come in with a hurricane? Especially after the recent batch of shark movies we've gotten.
Mother stars the killing.
When it comes to the visuals, things are pretty good. If you like seeing various different levels of destruction brought on by environmental things, you're in good hands. If you like seeing a lot of water, you're in good hands. Honestly, I wouldn't even probably be able to tell you if most of this water really is practical or not 'cause in my head it definitely seems like it's practical, but it also seems rather impractical to flood a whole bunch of village square footage in order to film a lot of this stuff. What I can tell you is that most of the sharks probably are not practical, but they still look good. The key here is for the most part, the sharks aren't really front and center. They crop up, they'll take some bites out of people, you'll see a little bit of them above the water and occasionally you'll see like a full shot of a shark in the water, but it's very much kind of like a classical monster movie where it's less is more. If I'm being fair to the effects though, there are times where the sharks are not as good as others and it's kind of noticeable when they're not as good as the others. You could also say that maybe there's some interaction between the sharks and the people that doesn't necessarily play out as believable, but for the most part, at least in my mind, it was good enough that it didn't really take me out of the movie at all.
Audio is decent, it's all balanced well. It does a good job of helping with the tensions of things, but largely it's definitely something that's going to fade into the background and be out of your mind by the time the movie's done. The line deliveries are relatively good. Like I said before, the actors do a pretty good job and that entails the line deliveries as well. Sometimes you might feel like a line could maybe be better or worse, so it's not necessarily where it's like “oh, this line delivery was horrible” in so much as maybe the writing behind the requested line could have been a little bit more elaborate or top tier? Overall I don't think it's bad in that regards. I mean the writing seems relatively fine and unlike some things, the actual idea and logic behind the sharks being there in the first place is relatively sound. For the most part I will say there is maybe one shark that makes way less sense to be involved in this movie at all than the other sharks. It's also a little bit funny that the movie goes out of its way to point out that sharks just do shark things. They're not actually out there to kill people all the time, and then it kind of has sharks that are out there and feel like they're just out to kill people all the time. Just saying it's a little bit have your cake and eat it too situation, but I mean, it's a shark movie. You expect it to eat people. It's going to happen. It's going to be a thing. The setup for all of that via the plot lines and the vents all work really nice, and mostly everything kind of involved helps cement that, so it works pretty good.
Where one could argue there is more than one would expect going on would be when it comes to the thinking man section of the movie, in which case I usually check out. But honestly, there's kind of a lot here. Whether I'm going to go in depth or not, you should know by now, but I can point out a bunch of the stuff I see and honestly, between the different characters and the different situations, there's a good chunk. I expected maybe the most obvious part, which would be the whole disaster situation. The environmental disaster, the weather disaster. Hurricane comes in, wrecks the town, causes untold amounts of damage to property and life. That's obvious. I mean, that's something that people have to deal with all the time in the real life, be it fires over in California or places like Florida getting hit by hurricanes. Places getting struck by major earthquakes. It's a common occurrence. They handle that relatively decent. It's the coverage of it, the way people react to it, it all seems plausible and real and kind of adds to that extra level of impressiveness over when it's showing you things that I assume are probably somewhat stock footage from actual events. The sharks are kind of the chef's kiss spices on top of the dish, but like I alluded to, it kind of works against it to some level, even though it adds to the fun of the movie. With the mom, you have a whole bunch of relationship stuff that you could get into, as well as the whole childbirth stuff - it adds an element of protectiveness to some of the scenes with our anxiety ridden kid. You could say that there's a little bit of commentary on that, how it can affect people, how emotional trauma can lock them into little cages, and how that just kind of plays out in the overall thing of living life. It doesn't feel as blunt as the environmental stuff, but I do feel that character gets enough time that it's not something that's exactly hidden. It doesn't feel like it goes in depth into it itself and kind of leaves you to infer a lot with it, but it is there. The foster family situation is pretty on the nose as well. I mean, it shows you that these foster parents are kind of trash foster parents and not treating those kids good. From that you could really do what you would, and from experience in the real world, I would say there are people that would run with that as this way of demonizing foster stuff as a whole, even though not all people are like that. Whereas others would use that as more of a talking point or a philosophical stepping stone to go into a discourse over how some people are in it for the wrong goals. Like I said, for a shark movie that I was chilling out and watching in a tub, it had a lot more to it than I really expected it to have.
But her kids take up the mantle.
I may call this movie a crappy shark movie, but it's really not that crappy. It's arguably not doing anything super impressive, especially if you've been in the field of watching a lot of shark movies, but it's not like it's some kind of offensive thing that you wish didn't exist. I feel without the kind of cultural zeitgeist that happened around the Sharknado franchise when it first came out, that would probably be more of the bottom barrel than this movie ever would be. It's put together fine, the acting is fine, the situations are relatively believable. And honestly, you could get away with having the same movie without the sharks and it would only change the danger to some level. Most of the major problems would still be there. Where I do think that it could pick up is that it doesn't feel as memorable, and maybe it's just because of the bulk of media in general and shark movies that I've watched. I mean, Jaws has these massive highlight moments and lines that just stick with you afterwards. This one just feels a lot more natural and it ends up playing out a lot like costumes in movie when the costume department makes really believable modern attire costumes for all of the actors. You don't even really think of it as costumes anymore because it feels like normal clothes. It doesn't stick out to you 'cause it's just normal. I feel this movie kind of has that same situation. It's not horrible. It tries doing some things and some of them you know better or worse than other parts of it for sure, but it doesn't really have anything so different that it stands out. And sticks with you. That said, if you got a little while, maybe a body of water that you're just hanging out in, there is definitely way, way, way worse shark movies that you could watch, and I've seen some of them. So, you know, maybe hang out and just have a good time. Watch a little hurricane flooding movie that happens to have some shark spice to spice up your life.