A South Carolina town contends with rapidly rising floodwaters from a raging Category 5 hurricane in Thrash, and that’s before the sharks arrive for a storm-induced feeding frenzy.
Writer/Director Tommy Wirkola (Violent Night, Dead Snow) combines a natural disaster flick with shark horror, made more suspenseful by his approach to utilizing as many practical effects as possible. That includes building submerging set pieces.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Thrash producers Adam McKay & Kevin Messick (Don’t Look Up, Fresh) about the technical challenges of making Wirkola’s latest, and its tricky tightrope walk of genres.
“We loved the idea of a storm thriller being combined with a shark movie,” McKay tells us of what got them excited about this project. “And then the fact that, since he pitched it, the idea of where sharks are increasing attacks because of climate warming is now actually, sadly starting to happen. So it was a combination of those factors, storm movie plus shark movie, and the underlying premise being based on the biggest emergency we’ve all ever faced: climate warming.”
Kevin Messick adds, “Then you throw in the special thought of Tommy, whom we met in 2009. We met him right after Dead Snow premiered at Sundance, and I believe we were his first Hollywood meeting when he first came over from Norway, and that’s where he pitched us Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which was the first movie we made with him back in 2010, I think. So we’ve known Tommy a long time. He’s a great guy.”
Wirkola cuts straight to the action in Thrash, kicking off with a harrowing flash flood, followed by the destruction of a tanker truck transporting “McKay’s Meats” that dramatically chums up the floodwaters and entices a ravenous shiver of bull sharks.
It’s the type of gag that signals Thrash isn’t entirely serious, even if its approach to natural disasters is deadly serious. “That was meant to be a little more of a smaller nod. Then, when the art department put the logo on, it was a little too big, but yes, it was just fun,” Messick says.
There are a lot of moving parts to Thrash, between its Category 5 storm, its sharks, and its ensemble cast spread across a devastated town under siege. When asked which presented the most technical challenges, Messick was candid.
“The whole thing was a challenge,” he explains. “It was a modest budget. The whole town square is a big tank in a parking lot in Melbourne. So, the visual effects, not only for the sharks, but for the flooded devastation that you experience in the movie, were all very tricky. I’ll give you one example. In that town square, the production designer built the sets like Legos in three levels, because you can’t keep raising the water, but you can lower the buildings.
“So the trick of what we did, as the floodwaters keep rising. The sets got shorter, if that makes sense. I thought it was genius when David Ingram, our production designer, came up with that plan, and it makes a lot of logical sense.
As for why Thrash is set in South Carolina, McKay points out the alarming increase in natural disasters, both in regularity and severity.
The producer states, “Sadly, there’s just more and more places that are experiencing the floods and the hurricanes and the torrential rains and tornadoes. There are a lot of places you could put it, but what we’re really seeing is Southern California, the Gulf, the Mid-Atlantic area, and Australia has had a bunch of shark attacks connected to climate warming due to torrential floods and rain. So there’s a lot of places you could go, but ultimately it was the Mid-Atlantic region, which once again, even though we made a fun popcorn movie, the tragedy of the reality is, we all know North Carolina has been hammered.”
Thrash is now streaming on Netflix.
