The shark movie craze initiated by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws in 1975 has not only persisted but has thrived. In the 50 years since that iconic summer blockbuster, countless “when animals attack” movies have hit the screen. Netflix even took a massive bite out of the genre with Under Paris in 2024, about a marine biologist who must stop a genetically mutated giant shark after it enters the Seine River just before a triathlon. The movie became a major global hit and has even led to an upcoming sequel, but before Under Paris 2 debuts, Netflix is already back with a new shark horror movie that is perfect for fans of Crawl.
Alexandre Aja’s Crawl is one of the best modern animal attack thrillers, trapping characters in a fight for survival against alligators in a flooded crawl space during a Category 5 hurricane. Netflix has seemingly taken a page out of Crawl’s book for its new shark-centered film Thrash, which debuted on the platform on April 10th. The movie, directed by Tommy Wirkola and starring Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor, is set in a flooded coastal town battling both nature’s wrath and a swarm of hungry sharks when a Category 5 hurricane leaves its residents stranded. It centers around an expectant mother and an agoraphobic teen fighting to survive.
Thrash is a pretty solid return to the shark horror subgenre for Netflix after Under Paris and a pretty solid addition to the hurricanes and hungry animals subgenre perfected and revitalized by Crawl. Although the film doesn’t yet hold ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and will have a long way to go to match Crawl’s “Certified Fresh” 84% critic score and 75% audience rating, it already seems to be putting up some stiff competition. Early critic reviews collected on the review aggregator site have been mostly positive. IndieWire described it as “a surprisingly fun disaster movie, with real bite and actual scares,” while Punch Drunk Critics said Thrash is “like chum in the water for those in need of a quick fix” shark horror flick.
Thrash isn’t a movie to be watched as serious cinema. Critics have described it as “junk-food” entertainment—a fun, ridiculous, and binge-worthy shark thriller perfect for roasting. It provides enough bonkers shark-on-human action to make it ridiculously fun. The movie is essentially a high-budget version of a Syfy channel movie like Sharknado, albiet more serious, and is designed to be enjoyed for its high-octane action and excessive blood and guts, and there’s plenty. Similar to Crawl, which also landed as popcorn entertainment, the film also does a pretty effective job at building tension within its disaster scenario, with its stars delivering some pretty convincing performances as trapped survivors fighting for their lives.
The tense survival action of Thrash swam onto Netflix’s streaming platform following a wave of other fresh titles this April that included fellow survival horror Beast. Other new streaming titles include American Gangster, Everest, Mission: Impossible, IF, and 2022’s Scream, with upcoming arrivals including Halloween Ends on April 13th and Apex on April 24th.
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