Once upon a time, in a conference room far, far, away, movie executives got together and apparently listened to a pitch that went something like: “What if we did a new movie about sharks and weather – sort of like a sequel to ‘Sharknado’ but without the ‘nado’ or the D-list celebrities and riffed off a hurricane instead?”
I admit, I am a sucker for weather disaster movies. I have chronic eye-roll syndrome from it now, but it’s part of the package with being a weather geek. So when I saw Netflix’s admittedly effective promo for “Thrash”, I figured, it’s only 90 minutes of my life and it seemed to have weathery special effects, and the rest of the family was at a hockey game or working.
I was in. And now my eyes hurt.
You know how for the most recent Twisters movie they consulted a hoard of meteorological experts and professional storm chasers, even down to using authentic meteorology class notes from University of Oklahoma students as props?
Thrash apparently did…none of such things. I’m not even sure they Googled how a hurricane works.
Without spoiling TOO much (because it has such a complex plot! 😂), the general premise is that a Category 5 hurricane is bearing down on a coastal South Carolina town with a storm surge of 15-18 feet that eventually wipes out the town’s seawall, sending a massive wall of water into town.
For some reason there’s a bunch of sharks too hanging out offshore that due to an unfortunate crash of a meat packing tanker truck (don’t ask) are now drawn into the flooded town by the “flood” of meat juice spilling from the ripped open truck.
Much mayhem ensues with dozens of sharks now swimming among residents trapped in flooded homes and cars. Oh yes, one of them is very pregnant. Yadda yadda chomp, bite, scream, toss dynamite, kablooey, repeat.
But I was not here for the torn off arms and tuchus’s. I was here for the weather.
SO HOW IS THE WEATHER STUFF?
So I’m guessing that in this modern day bizarro world, social media does not exist yet. I say that only because the story begins with “Hurricane Henry” as a Category 5 hurricane with 150 knots and 60 foot seas just over 2 hours away from landfall – which is apparently news to this entire town. Many are still there in town packing up and whatnot — guess <2 hours from landfall was an excellent time to start?
In real life? You know your social media feed would be FILLED with photos starting 2 weeks before landfall and updating every 5 minutes showing various hurricane hype maps freaking everyone out. They hint in the movie that the storm track changed a little to hit Annieville and the storm was intensifying but it’d still have way more than 2 hours lead time.
But no, now it’s 1 hour and 22 min to landfall of a Cat 5 hurricane but Joe at the town’s meat packing plant is back to do “one more run” before the storm hits. Sure. Meanwhile, NOW the town is full of people trying to pack cars and flee.
(Also, it’s not very windy for a hurricane with 172 mph winds an hour out.)
Then somehow one of our main characters who has apparently spent the past 82 minutes driving around the small town to get to a store that’s closed finds herself still driving the streets.
Now, I’m a long time veteran of the Mercer Mess, but even that mess you can get through long before 82 mins passes. Not sure if she was just driving circles for an hour, but she could have driven to Charleston by now (though I guess the interstate had flooded by then).
Instead, she’s still pretty much in the same part of town when “landfall” arrives and the seawall breaks and here comes the water and its shark lunch time.
Also noting through the next hours of chaos that it really is not that windy in town and there appear to be little if any wind issues. Heck, some homes even keep power, somehow. They did do a reasonable job with illustrating storm surge dangers with hurricanes, but for an alleged Category 5 storm, the actual weather itself rates somewhere about a mid-November day in Seattle.
The weather clears overnight and becomes the background story to the rising waters and shark feeding frenzy and my lingering interest in the movie quickly fades.
If you like silly movies with cartoonish gore and some semblance of weather special effects, go for it. But on a weather geek scale, I give it 1 🦈 chomp out of 5 🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈.