There are sharks in the water. And not just the ones in Netflix‘s new shark thriller, Thrash, but also all those critics circling in on the film, looking for blood. See, early numbers, including a brutal 37% Rotten Tomatoes score, should have killed it on arrival, yet after the long weekend, it’s most probably swam to the top of Netflix’s most-watched charts. Thrash is a success, not because it’s not nonsense, but because it’s fun nonsense.
Anyone who has read the plotline for Netflix’s latest release probably isn’t expecting an Oscar-winner. It’s a film about a hurricane that destroys a small town and unleashes a shiver of sharks on those left behind. Among them is a pregnant lady who must make it through the storm and give birth to her first child.
Directed by Tommy Wirkola, the same guy behind Dead Snow and Violent Night, Thrash was never about creating the next Jaws. It was always about poking fun at the genre and, of course, disaster movies.
And yet nobody seems to get that this is supposed to be satire.
Wirkola is very aware of the audience’s expectations and toys with every single one of them, often delivering the most over-the-top surprises they can think of. People die and come back to life again. Sharks eat all the bad people. And the survivors must have lucky three-leaf clovers protecting them in all the ridiculous scenarios.
It was all meant to be fun.
Remember when movies were fun? When audiences could just switch off their brains and enjoy movies without questioning every single thing. Remember movies like The Day After Tomorrow, Deep Impact, 2012, Armageddon, San Andreas, and Geostorm? They were never meant to be serious. They were meant to be escapism.
And that’s what Thrash is. Considering all the chaos in the world today, escapism might be exactly what we need – to be able to shut down for 90 minutes and enjoy the ridiculousness and imagine what you might do in the same situation.
This isn’t a movie about logic or a character study or even a realistic survivor thriller. Thrash commits to its absurd plot. Djimon Honsou, the marine expert uncle, just happens to arrive fully equipped to save the day. A woman gives birth in a flooded town surrounded by sharks, creating a pool of blood that invites the sharks to eat her and her newborn. It’s completely tongue-in-cheek.
If you catch the joke, and suddenly Thrash is a lot more fun than that 37% would have you believe.
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