If nothing else, Thrash makes Crawl look like a masterpiece. At the time, many — including this writer — dismissed Alexandre Aja’s 2019 bloodthirsty-gator flick because it takes place in a basement in Florida, and, well, houses don’t really have basements in Florida. In retrospect, however, that’s a minor detail compared to the many, many logical leaps and glaring inconsistencies in Thrash — too many to count, really, but among them are “why are these houses filling up with water at such dramatically different rates?” and “did she really just cut her own umbilical cord with a piece of wet wood?”
Of course, expecting logic from a movie with the line, “Mommy’s got to fight some f*cking sharks” — which happens immediately after the umbilical-cord cutting, by the way — is always going to be a losing proposition. So is expecting much in general from a film that was originally conceived as a theatrical release from Sony Pictures, then quietly shuffled onto Netflix after it was shot. The only really surprising thing here is that it was ever slated for theaters to begin with, as Thrash’s problems begin at the script level. Much like the lifelong residents of the coastal Carolinas who stay home during a Category 5 hurricane without even bothering to board up their windows, these studio executives should have seen what was coming.
