UNDER PARIS (SOUS LA SEINE) (NETFLIX) (2024)

SYNOPSIS: Sophia, a brilliant scientist comes to know that a large shark is swimming deep in the river.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Another month, another shark-related thriller and this time it comes from French filmmaker Xavier Gens who helmed the horrible 2007 Hitman. Just to be clear, Under Paris is not a bad shark movie consider the bar is pretty low at this point since the B-movie enterprise is filled to the brim with lousy inconsequential shark thrillers.

So here’s the story, a shark scientist or perhaps oceanographer, Sophia (Bérénice Bejo) is still trying to get over the death of her husband and her team members who lost their lives to a deadly shark attack three years ago in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a real place where marine debris ends up. Got to admit it’s the best trivia you learnt in this entire movie.

In the meantime, the shark dubbed Lilith which presumably killed Sophia’s loved ones is back on the radar and she is busy swimming up and down the famous Seine river looking for her next target. With the Olympics triathlon coming, the smug Mayor of Paris, Angèle (Aurélia Petit) refuses to cancel the event thus Sophia has to team up with Adil (Nassim Lyes), a river policeman to hunt down the creature.

With the Eiffel Tower and other prominent tourist spots often in the background, Under Paris truly wants to remind audiences that all these shark mayhem are indeed taking place here and not behind some green screen or the volume. There are a couple of well-staged, gruesome attacks from Lilith with Gens making good use of the location settings. Worth to mention is the exhilarating climatic attack scene happening in the Catacombs might well be the bloodiest in shark movies history.

On top of the more than decent CGI and practical effects, Gens and his writers threw in a couple of environmental, ecological messages in a frail attempt to acknowledge our dying planet and ocean. He also introduces a naive S.O.S. Sharks activist Mika (Léa Léviant) that complicates matters more than achieving her goal of luring Lilith back into the open sea. The humans with the exception of Sophia and Adil are mainly baits for that matter.

Even if Gens dials back on the ridiculous bombastic ending which hints of a sequel we still wouldn’t say Under Paris is a solid aquatic shark thriller in the league of Jaws. Nevertheless it’s entertaining enough for a single watch, not as campy as Sharknado but not on the escapism level of The Meg and Deep Blue Sea.

MOVIE RATING:

Review by Linus Tee