Netflix’s killer shark film Under Paris is the missing link between Jaws and Sharktopus

Conventional wisdom says there are two ways to make a movie about a shark attack. You can put it in the sea, where most sharks live, and try to use it character, plot, compelling actionand maybe over-the-top refreshments to make your story feel unique. Or you can attract viewers by putting sharks somewhere where no one expects sharks – fly through the sky and land anywhere in Los Angeles! Wander the streets of downtown New Orleans! Swimming through the snow in a ski resort! Bursting out of the ground in the jungle! Most filmmakers who choose the latter path must abandon any sense of reality and embrace absurdism. Netflix’s French thriller Under Parisby Hitman director Xavier Gens, is a daring attempt to have it all.

Gens and co-writers Maud Heywang and Yannick Dahan seem to want their thriller to be both a serious, thoughtful, character-driven film and a pulpy, gory thriller in which a CG shark turns people into comrades in the City of Light. That plot increases credibility at every point, but Gens refuses to compromise any of the tone or realism expected of a “shark in an impossible place” movie. Instead, he gives it the most serious face he can.

Yet it is one extremely crazy and not particularly scary movie.

Best Actress Oscar nominee Bérénice Bejo (The artist) stars as Sophia, a marine researcher whose shark tagging project went terribly wrong when a mako named “Lilith” attacked her dive crew years ago. Traumatized to the point where she spends most of the film with an unchanging, half-determined/half-lost expression, Sophia ends up in Paris, where she gives boisterous aquarium lectures to brash school groups.

Her past resurfaces (along with a familiar fin) when fervent young activist Mika (Léa Léviant) contacts her on behalf of a resistance group called SOS, or Save Our Seas. Mika’s team hacks into wildlife tagging systems to deactivate the tags so fishing boats can’t use them to track animal locations. SOS is tracking Lilith’s tag and they traced her to the Seine. Mika, her hacktivist friend Ben (Nagisa Morimoto), and their group want to save the shark by luring it back to the ocean. Sophia just wants to prevent Parisians from being eaten by a deep-sea shark they wouldn’t expect to encounter in a relatively shallow freshwater river.

As much as this premise feels like cult movie silliness aimed at fans of messy creature features, there’s at least a little science behind it. Sharks have been found in it The English River ThamesSome shark species can do that navigating fresh water or the transition from rivers to oceans and backand declining habitats and rising temperatures on earth have caused many species to behave in strange ways evolve rapidly to fit new ecosystems. (The film also draws heavily on recent films real attempts to detox the Seine so it can be used for the 2024 Olympic Games.)

That makes everything Under Paris one of the most substantive of the many water attack horror films that have attempted to continue in the wake of Steven Spielberg’s film Jaws, at least for most of the runtime. The leads are established actors with well-deserved reputations, who exude a grim, soulful determination. The cinematography is razor sharp and beautifully lit, a highlight in an era of dark films. The themes, about climate change and division between generations, have some resonance. At almost every moment, this film asks viewers to take everything at face value.

Gens and his co-writers don’t want to get too sober about the details of the film. Whenever a character brings up the improbability of a giant mako baiting Parisians, Sophia changes the subject as quickly as possible, with a pithy “You didn’t doubt it. when it was a beluga whale!” or a throwaway comment about climate change and evolution.

Overloading the script with characters and plot threads feels like a similar distraction, designed to keep people from thinking too much about what they’re watching. That could be the best explanation for most of the scenes with Nassim Lyes, the protagonist in Gens’ hard-hitting recent action film. Bend!, as sergeant. Adil, the leader of a creepy militarized River Brigade police force that monitors the Seine and takes down unauthorized divers and kayakers. His group, of course, first refuses to believe there is a shark and then refuses to entertain the idea of ​​saving it instead of killing it.

A surprising percentage of Under Paris‘ The 101-minute running time cuts to Adil and others arguing about and trying to prove or disprove the shark’s existence. Sometimes this is a difficult process, because the audience already knows the answer. But at least it’s a way to solve one of the biggest problems facing most ocean shark attack movies: how to get people back into the water, where they can be dramatically killed. eaten. Eventually, though, the action ramps up – and at that point Gens makes a sharp turn, abandoning the seriousness and turning the film into the pulpy, over-the-top, eye-rolling shlock feature he’d tried so hard to avoid.

If you want to define the “two ways to make a shark movie,” broken down along an even simpler axis, you could also say the basic paths are “Copycat.” Jaws for all you’re worth” and “Do literally anything else.” Again, Under Paris has it both ways. Initially, Gens and his company build unique characters and chart their own path. They then introduce the Big Major International Swimming Event that’s about to take place in the Seine, and the mercenary, no-reason mayor who refuses to cancel the event just because people keep getting killed. Suddenly the film feels like a pale echo of Spielberg’s masterpiece, following the playbook line by line, right up to the obligatory scene where Sophia makes a dramatic discovery during a shark autopsy.

But when the inevitable carnage begins, Under Paris seems instead to be derived from much sloppier shark attack films: an unlikely dichotomy of a diver coming straight out Deep blue seamixed with Piranha 3D‘s barrage of over-the-top CG water action. They all leave Under Paris it feels like a lame attempt to grab every possible audience at once, in a way that doesn’t fully serve any of them.

None of these strange tonal shifts, copycatting, or narrative overcrowding would matter Under Paris was tense, frightening and captivating. Scientists and researchers complain about the endless stream of killer shark movies driven irrational fear of animals that are generally not that dangerous, but it seems natural enough that viewers retain a fascination and fear of primal killers that most victims will never see coming. Killer-shark movies – of both the winkingly ridiculous “land sharks gone wild” variety and the at least somewhat plausible ones – will continue to be made as long as people remember their first viewing experience Jaws and hope to recreate that thrilling tension.

But no matter which mode filmmakers choose for a shark movie, they have to bring something valuable to that mode. Under Paris gets about halfway there on every front – drama, suspense, terror, character conflict, messages about humanity versus nature – and not much beyond that. It’s a film destined to be overtaken within a year by its own ‘every shark attack in’ Under Paris‘Supercut on YouTube, when someone realizes how easy it would be to take this derivative, all-the-kitchen-sink movie and reduce it to a much simpler experience, aimed at a much simpler audience.

Under Paris now streaming on Netflix.