Thrash is available to stream with a Netflix subscription, but I'm sure many readers know that already. The film was an international hit on the platform, and there are already people wondering if a sequel is on the way. I enjoyed the movie well enough, but I would've liked it a lot more without the sharks.
I've already had this conversation with coworkers, and legitimately, I don't think this is a wild take. I think that had Thrash not included sharks in the story, it would've been a better movie. That's, allegedly, a hot take, so allow me to explain.
I Think The Sharks In Thrash Take Focus Off The Real Danger
Sharks are cool, I understand that. It's why Shark Week is a television staple, and movies like Jaws helped create a real fear of the species as a whole. I understand why whoever made Thrash feels they needed sharks to make a movie more exciting. Unfortunately, it distracts from the real killer of the movie by a significant margin, flooding.
Even the best disaster movies sometimes overshadow the fact that flooding, especially on the scale that we see in Thrash, is responsible for a significant loss of life. I kept waiting for the movie to put more focus on that as a threat, but it seemed to fall by the wayside the more that sharks were worked into the story. I just feel like this movie could've stood out in a bigger way, being a legitimately scary movie about people trying to survive a flood. We already have a film franchise about people surviving natural disasters amidst shark attacks, and less of the former.
With Sharks, Thrash Just Feels Like A Worse Version Of Sharknado
To me, Thrash felt like a worse version of Sharknado. I should mention as well, that while those movies leaned into the camp, the first movie has a better Rotten Tomatoes score than Thrash. I think there's something to that, honestly, and it may be because the latter of the two doesn't lean into camp in the way I expected it to.
In fairness, the Sharknado franchise has been over for years, so maybe it was time for another movie franchise to rise up and replace it. Then again, if I'm the person with the rights to Sharknado, I'm looking at Thrash's success and seeing it might be time to get the band back together for a reboot.
I think, cards on the table, I went into Thrash thinking Sharknado was the gold standard it had to live up to, and felt disappointed. Not everyone is going to feel that way, and I'd be lying if I said I was going to skip out on a sequel should it come out. That said, I'm still very invested in seeing Sharknado return instead, and we get more WTF shark moments than what we saw in Thrash.
For those who haven't seen it yet, Thrash is over to stream on Netflix. I'd still recommend checking it out despite my gripes, but I will die on the hill that it is not even close to the superior choice for a shark-focused disaster movie when Djimon Hounsou doesn't even get to fight a shark!
