Thrash (2026)

Tommy Wirkola's Thrash arrives with a Category 5 hurricane, a breached seawall, a tanker of animal blood, and a great white named Nellie. This is a survival thriller assembled from spare parts, and it knows it. The sharks eat people. The water rises. Nobody pauses to explain what any of it means about the planet, the economy, or the human condition. A hurricane is a hurricane, not a parable, and the film treats its storm as weather instead of a warning.

Whitney Peak and Djimon Hounsou anchor the cast, and their presence is handled with a shrug that borders on the admirable. Race is never a subject here. The characters simply exist, and the screenplay never feels the need to comment on it. Dakota, played by Peak, suffers from agoraphobia, which functions as an obstacle to be overcome when the plot requires a rowboat. It is a mental health detail, not an identity. Lisa, pregnant and trapped, spends much of the running time screaming in floodwater, which is a survival mechanic, not a statement about women. The film is content to let these people be people.

Elsewhere, a foster father skims welfare checks from his wards, which reads as small-time villainy in service of a shark-related comeuppance. There is no argument about systems. The siblings blow up bull sharks with dynamite and drive away. Critics split on the results, and the 45 percent on Rotten Tomatoes suggests the chum was more compelling than the humans. The result is a lean creature feature with a diverse cast and no agenda attached to it. On the scale of social consciousness, it registers as a faint hum. The sharks, at least, are equal opportunity.