{"id":391381,"date":"2026-04-10T09:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T09:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/391381\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T09:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T09:31:09","slug":"phoebe-dynevor-in-netflix-shark-survival-thriller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/391381\/","title":{"rendered":"Phoebe Dynevor in Netflix Shark Survival Thriller"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEvery shark movie owes a debt to the sacred mother\u00a0Jaws<\/a>, but the thriller about bitey creatures spreading carnage and mayhem in bad weather that\u00a0Thrash\u00a0most resembles is Alexandre Aja\u2019s superior nail-biter,\u00a0Crawl<\/a>. (By the way, where is that sequel we were promised?) Instead of voracious alligators preying on Florida locals trapped by a Category 5 hurricane, this time it\u2019s a bunch of aggressive bull sharks and one very hungry pregnant great white cruising into a coastal South Carolina town when the levees break and the floodwaters rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the title begs to lose the first \u201ch,\u201d Tommy Wirkola<\/a>\u2019s film is actually kind of fun in its silly, disposable way, and should do decent numbers on Netflix<\/a>, where it was picked up after Sony dropped plans for a theatrical release. That\u2019s if audiences can get on board with eyebrow-raising plot points like Phoebe Dynevor<\/a>\u2019s Lisa popping out a baby in surging waters, and almost immediately after, telling the infant: \u201cMommy\u2019s here. Mommy\u2019s just gotta fight some fucking sharks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThrash\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tAn easily digestible blend of slick and stupid.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, April 10
Cast: Phoebe Dynevor, Whitney Peak, Djimon Hounsou, Matt Nable, Andrew Lees, Stacy Claussen, Alyla Browne, Dante Ubaldi
Director-screenwriter: Tommy Wirkola
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated R,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 26 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWirkola (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters<\/a>) appears to want to have it both ways, peppering\u00a0Thrash with self-aware humor and\u00a0Sharknado-adjacent absurdity while also crafting a semi-realistic disaster movie that reaches for contemporary relevance by noting the substantial increase in frequency, intensity and duration of Atlantic hurricanes and the deadly threat of the storm surge. The result is a film that\u2019s neither one thing nor the other, though at just under 90 minutes, it\u2019s pacy, pulpy and eventful enough to amuse fans of the shark subgenre.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe meet the appealing main characters as Hurricane Henry picks up speed and onscreen text marks the time remaining until landfall. <\/p>\n

\n\tTransplanted New Yorker Lisa works in the offices of the McKay\u2019s Meats plant (presumably a winking nod to producer Adam McKay<\/a>). She\u2019s now pregnant and alone after moving thousands of miles from home for a jerk fianc\u00e9 who promptly ran off. Her concerned mother badgers her over the phone about giving more thought to a water birth (a joke whose payoff comes much later) while she drives past townsfolk scrambling to comply with the mandatory evacuation order. Learning that the interstate is already closed, Lisa realizes she has left it too late to flee.<\/p>\n

\n\tEighteen-year-old Dakota (Whitney Peak<\/a>) lost her father at a young age and is still traumatized by the recent death of her mother, her anxiety making her agoraphobic. She insists on sheltering in place until marine biologist Uncle Dale (Djimon Hounsou<\/a>), who\u2019s two hours up the coast by boat, can come to rescue her. When Lisa gets trapped in her car by a fallen tree, Dakota is forced to venture outside or watch the expectant mother drown just as she\u2019s going into labor.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, across town, teenager Ron (Stacy Clausen) and his younger siblings Dee (Alyla Browne) and Will (Dante Ubaldi) are stuck at the mercy of their negligent foster parents, who cash their government subsidy checks and feed the kids dry Wonder Bread while they eat steaks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTheir redneck adoptive father Billy Olson (Matt Nable) is smugly certain that reinforced glass, waterproof wiring and a home generator will see them safely through the storm. (\u201cAin\u2019t nothin\u2019 but a little bit of weather.\u201d) But when a wall of water crashes through the windows, turning the living room into a swimming pool that\u2019s soon crawling with dorsal fins, the kids are left to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n

\n\tShooting mostly on a studio lot and in a purpose-built tank in Melbourne, Australia, Wirkola handles the hurricane elements confidently, mixing practical effects, stock footage and only occasionally distracting CG as trees fold in the fierce winds, cars are swept up, roofs torn off and walls demolished. He drops in enough secondary characters to provide shark food while the principals battle to survive. A McKay\u2019s Meats tanker truck that gets split in half, disgorging industrial quantities of fresh chum, is a droll touch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Norwegian director balanced horror, humor and action with more panache in the films that put him on the map,\u00a0Dead Snow\u00a0and its sequel, which dumped Nazi zombies in mountain woodlands. Jokey moments like Lisa playing Vanessa Carlton on her phone to calm her as contractions get closer seem a tad forced, as do some of the one-liners, like Dee telling her little brother, \u201cHey Will, bet you never saw this on\u00a0Shark Week,\u201d after Ron prepares an appetizer of T-bone and dynamite.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the height of the tension, Hounsou gets the groan-worthy task of pausing the action long enough to share his back story with a cocky TV newsman (Andrew Lees), tracing his fascination with sharks to a near-fatal hippo attack in Mozambique, when a pair of ferocious bull sharks intervened just in time. Kudos to the actor for delivering those lines with a straight face.<\/p>\n

\n\tNothing in\u00a0Thrash\u00a0is going to wow Steven Spielberg, and its adherence to plot logic is elastic to say the least. But as bloody, dumb shark thrillers go, it stays afloat, gaining some credibility from the natural disaster element. Compared to shark survival stinkers like The Requin with Alicia Silverstone or The Black Demon with Josh Lucas, it\u2019s more than passable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every shark movie owes a debt to the sacred mother\u00a0Jaws, but the thriller about bitey creatures spreading carnage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[154845,142087,93,61,60,270,1868,156912,127143,156913],"class_list":{"0":"post-391381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-adam-mckay","9":"tag-djimon-hounsou","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-netflix","15":"tag-phoebe-dynevor","16":"tag-tommy-wirkola","17":"tag-whitney-peak"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}