This weekend, Netflix has let loose all kinds of fearsome creatures — bloodthirsty lions, flesh-eating sharks and most intimidating of all, Arnold Schwarzenegger in a comedy.
At the top of Watch With Us’ binge-watch list is Thrash, a new action thriller featuring Phoebe Dynevor battling sharks during a dangerous storm.
It’s just as dangerous on dry land as Idris Elba stares down a rabid lion who wants to eat his two daughters. My money is on Idris to win that showdown.
There are no wild animals in Kindergarten Cop, a pleasant fish-out-of-water comedy that stars Austria’s most famous bodybuilder uttering the immortal line, “It’s not a tum-mah!”
‘Thrash’ (2026)
Jaws revolutionized blockbuster filmmaking, but it also spawned a million shark attack imitators. Some of them are better than others, and one of them is the new Netflix original Thrash. Produced by Adam McKay, Thrash stars Phoebe Dynevor as Lisa, a pregnant woman living in a quiet South Carolina coastal town that is unexpectedly hit by a Category 5 hurricane. As the levees break, water floods the entire town — and traps Lisa in her car. To make matters worse, several bull sharks take advantage of the situation and swim into town looking for dinner — and Lisa is at the top of the menu.
Like 2019’s better-than-expected alligator film Crawl, Thrash serves up A-list actors in a B-movie plot, resulting in a massively entertaining picture that shouldn’t be taken too seriously. There are some gestures at addressing climate change (why was the hurricane so powerful to begin with?), but for the most part, Thrash is a silly, animals-attack! film that gives you exactly what you expect — tense action sequences, gruesome deaths and soggy actors battling CGI sharks. It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s fun enough to make you not care about logic.
Thrash is streaming on Netflix.
‘Beast’ (2022)
I’d watch Idris Elba in practically anything, and that includes Beast, a so-so man vs. nature action flick that’s elevated by the actor’s charismatic presence. He stars as Dr. Nate Samuels, a recent widower who takes his two daughters to a South African animal reserve to recover and reconnect with his family. He’s joined by his longtime best friend Martin (Sharlto Copley), but their peaceful vacation is soon disturbed by a rogue lion that is attacking the locals. When all four of them are stranded in the wilderness with the beast, they have to rely on each other to survive the night — or else Nate will have something else to mourn.
There’s not a lot to Beast — once the main leads are trapped in the reserve with the rabid lion, what follows is a series of predictable set pieces where one or more of them have to find a way to escape the animal’s attacks. But Elba is always watchable as a dad who has to battle an animal that has also lost its family and is pissed off about it. The move half-heartedly conjures up a metaphorical comparison between man and beast, but it commits more fully to its action sequences, which are satisfactorily intense. You might not remember Beast after you’ve watched it, but it’s entertaining in the moment, and you could watch far worse.
Beast is streaming on Netflix.
‘Kindergarten Cop’ (1990)
There are no actual beasts in the 1990 comedy Kindergarten Cop, although you could make a case for how imposing lead star Arnold Schwarzenegger looks in the film. He plays John Kimble, a jaded LAPD detective who is assigned to find Rachel (Penelope Ann Miller). She went into hiding with her son to escape her ex-husband, the ruthless drug lord Cullen Crisp (Richard Tyson), and Kimble wants to find her so she’ll testify against him. Believing her son to be in an Astoria, Oregon, kindergarten class, Kimble goes undercover as a new teacher, but for the ruse to work, he’ll have to holster his gun, improve his attitude and maybe even learn to love and laugh a little.
Kindergarten Cop is an odd hybrid of late ‘80s action film, complete with shootouts, sex workers and drug addiction, and early ‘90s family-friendly pictures like Mrs. Doubtfire. The result is a comedy that more or less works, with Arnold Schwarzenegger poking fun at his tough-guy image and character actress Pamela Reed getting in some nicely delivered wisecracks as Kimble’s partner, Detective Phoebe O’ Hara. But if you think this film is suitable for kids, be warned — the movie has a scary beginning and ending that may frighten even some of the grown-ups watching it.
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