Thrash Parent Guide

Hurricane Harry is streaking towards the southeastern United States, and the storm surge it generates has overrun the levees outside of the little town of Anniesburg. Mandatory evacuation order notwithstanding, there are still a few people there when the floods hit: Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor) is dangerously pregnant and desperate to escape the storm before she goes into labor. Dakota (Whitney Peak) hasn’t left the house since her mother died almost two months ago but her uncle, Dale (Djimon Honsou) is worried about her, and plans to come pick her up, if he can. Then there are the Olsen siblings (Alyla Brown, Stacy Clausen, and Dante Ubaldi), three unfortunate foster kids who find their unpleasant guardians are less than reliable in an emergency. 

For the remaining residents of Anniesburg, things are about to get worse: A huge pack of sharks has slipped in with the floodwater, and those left behind find themselves in the midst of a feeding frenzy. 

Thrash may not sound like the smartest movie ever written, but it has a lot of potential as an over-the-top disaster movie, something in the neighborhood ofCrawl. Unfortunately, this production let down by the dialogue, which is ear-gratingly bad. I started wondering if I was having a stroke at one point. The script sounds like it was written by a team of confused aliens and translated by some local lunatic. B-movies can be so-bad-it’s-good or so-bad-it’s-just-bad, and we’ve stumbled right across that line here. 

There isn’t going to be much value as family entertainment in this feature, and not just because of the half-a-dozen brutal maulings. The film comes in at about one f-bomb per minute, along with other assorted profanities just to balance things out. Even the swearing is awkward. People simply do not talk like the people in this movie.

I suspect that if you don’t mind being dragged bodily into the uncanny valley by the dialogue, you might have a good time with the fast-paced silliness of the plot, which bounces happily between the ludicrous exploits of its protagonists. There’s a lot to like here, if you go in for the goofy disaster movie. There’s just as much that will drive you insane.