Movie Review – Under Paris
Principal Cast : Berenice Bejo, Nassim Lyes, Lea Leviant, Sandra Parfait, Askel Ustun, Aurelia Petit, Marvin Dubart, Daouda Keita, Ibrahima Ba, Anne Marivin, Stephane Jacquot, Jean-Marc Belli, Nagisa Morimoto, Yannick Choirat, Inaki Lartigue, Victor Pontecorvo, Thomas Espinera, Anais Parello, Ivan Gonzalez, Patrick Ligardes.
Synopsis: To save Paris from a bloodbath, a grieving scientist is forced to face her tragic past when a giant shark appears in the Seine.
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Warning: This review contains numerous spoilers for Under Paris. Read on only if you have seen the film.
Despite relatively poor visual effects, an astoundingly nonsensical plot and some of the stupidest characters ever put to the screen, a lot of popcorn chewing fun can be had with the shark-infested antics of Under Paris, a film borrowing liberally from such classics as Jaws (naturally), Deep Blue Sea and even Sharknado to some degree. This is an astonishingly stupid film, but if you squint just right you’ll likely have a blast. It helps that the main setting, Paris, has been front and center for much of 2024 given the capital’s iconic structures have formed part of the Olympic Games, which also happens to form part of the film’s indigestive plot, and a lot of the location work is filmed along, through, above and beneath the surface of the Seine, Paris’ mighty central waterway. It makes this a gorgeous film with a similar Euro-centric tone to that of John Woo’s abortive action remake attempt (also on Netflix, by the way), The Killer. However – and this is a big however – unlike Woo’s vomitous remake, Under Paris knows exactly the kind of film it is and goes for broke with stupid horror set-pieces, plenty of blood and gore, and a delightfully downbeat ending that will satisfy fans of Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes.
Three years after losing her research team in the Great Pacific garbage patch to a mutated mako shark attack, marine biologist Sophia Assalas (Berenice Bejo – A Knight’s Tale, The Artist) works at a Paris aquarium as a tour guide. She is introduced to precocious young environmental activist Mika (Lea Leviant) and her associate Ben (Nagisa Morimoto), who reveal that the shark, Lilith, has found its way to the relative sanctuary of the Seine, the central river of Paris, where she has grown exponentially. Stunned, Sophia alerts the local water police, who initially do not believe her – make sharks do not swim in fresh water – they soon come to the conclusion that an imminent pre-Olympics triathlon to be held in the waterway is in danger; although Paris’ mayor (Anne Marivin), a venal and selfish politician, does not heed the police’s warnings to cancel the event, this ensures the police and Sophia must risk their lives to stop a full-scale bloodbath.
I must admit that in my gradually greying old age I’m slowly losing my ability to view these kinds of D-grade schlock movie entries with the gleeful fun and suspension of disbelief I may have approached them in my twenties. I did, after all, find a mild delight with the original Sharknado, describing it as “awesomely horrible”, and I guess I have to begrudgingly admit that while Under Paris – described in some quarters as “one of the best shark movies ever made…“, as close to a bald-faced lie if ever there was – fits neatly into that so-bad-it’s-awesome category. The film steals outright from better subgenre films, aping classic monster movie tropes with a gradually rising sense of alarm, indifferent authority figures, blatantly stupid character decisions made at almost every level, and absolutely redonkulous shattering of not only the laws of nature, but also the Netwonian laws of physics, but does so in a manner that’s inviting rather than off-putting. Serious ichthyologists will scoff outright at the basic premise and simplistic sciencebabble used to overcome many of the film’s egregious loopholes, and there are several convenient contrivances to the story that made me roll my eyes a few times, but Under Paris absolutely knows its putting all its shark eggs in a single basket by pitting one of nature’s deadliest apex predators in a metropolitan environment and, in perhaps the most appropriate way possible, letting Darwinism do its thing. Know your audience – Under Paris astutely knows its audience.
The film is directed by Xavier Gens, a filmmaker noted for action entries like Hitman and horror projects like Cold Skin, returns to pulpy horror-nonsense with a playful sense of the absurd. Some films of this ilk try to get all serious now with its message – and Under Paris‘ environmental messaging is at the forefront of a solidly misplaced (and cringeworthy) montage put together by the world’s stupidest activist, played by Lea Leviant – but the net result is one of indifference when Gens can simply blow shit up good during the film’s bloody, hilariously Piranha-esque climax. Gens takes his budget and parlays it into a shredding final act that gets stupider and stupider as it goes on, concluding with the complete flooding of central Paris after a few of the bridges across the Seine are destroyed (not sure how that works, like at all), and at times he tries almost too hard to insert the moral compass of the film’s primary protagonists when all the audience wants is human carnage and sharky scares.
If you watch this one up loud with the lights off, a few moments might make you jump, but in another of Gens’ directorial missteps he manages to never quite introduce legitimate tension to proceedings, instead relying on a breathless pace to keep audiences entertained. Sure, there’s several laughable moments of the sharks eating people in a frenzy, and more than a couple of dubious plot twists derived from imbecilic bureaucracy, but the lead cast – particularly Oscar nominated actress Berenice Bejo and her co-star Nassim Lyes (A Bookshop In Paris, Overdose), who have limited chemistry together but deliver rousing performances – understand the assignment. This film isn’t about the humans, or as I prefer to think of them, narrative chum, it’s about the shark. Or, as you may have guess by constant pluralising the term, the absolute swarm of them living in the flooded catacombs of Paris immediately adjacent to the Seine. Xavier Gens and his team balance thin character development with “what looks cool” storytelling in giving us as much plausible shark action as often as possible while maintaining the façade of a serious plot. Under Paris isn’t exactly the film for a serious plot.
Francophiles will love this nonsensical shark film that defies logic and abjectly steals from a swag of blockbuster Hollywood classics. It delights in mayhem, gleefully chewing through countless victims in its quest to satisfy the hardest subgenre fan, and for the most part succeeds. Several characters do a lot of dumb things, the shark FX look like they spent a buck-twenty on them in Adobe Aftereffects, and the rather downbeat ending had me guffawing at the all-too-try-hard similarities to Fox’s Apes franchise, in wanting to a set up a “Planet of the Sharks” franchise without telling anyone. But it’s enjoyable schlock, a bunch of high hokum at the expense of intellect that somehow works, perhaps with Berenice Bejo’s emotional performance (honestly though, she’s gives us far too many serious tears for a piece of junkfood cinema like this) being the only confusing piece of the jigsaw that doesn’t quite work. You get the sense that Bejo is acting in a far more dramatic movie, instead of recognising the whole thing is like that one jumpscare in Deep Blue Sea with Samuel L Jackson turned into an entire movie. Do not expect a moving emotional experience and instead, turn off the lights and amp up the volume for a hilariously over-the-top shark experience that made me chuckle a lot, particularly in the final confusing act. Silly shark-centric fun, at worst.
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