Xavier Gens’ new killer shark movie UNDER PARIS finally hit Netflix and while it was a super amount of fun, it wasn’t the fun I was hoping for
Under Paris wastes no time in getting to the shark action. We got about 5 minutes into the film and our protagonist Sophia goes full Jason Statham.
In an attempt to rescue her already dead friends, she jumps into the ocean with nothing but her wetsuit and a harpoon gun to take on a massively oversized shark they have called Lilith.
A piece of rubbish then gets tangled between the shark and Sophia. The shark decides to take her a wee trip down into the deep abyss of the ocean. Here is when I went “Ah, this has to be a dream sequence here, she is having reoccurring nightmares about that horrific day”. Nope.
I’m no expert on deep sea diving or the effects on one’s body when you reach the Lovecraftian level of deep. It was that deep, I honestly thought we were going to see Cthulhu. I imagined that she would’ve met the same fate as the recent Titan capsule, and well, we all know what happened – it imploded turning those inside into nothing but a cloud of red mist.
But yeah, this wasn’t a nightmare sequence, this actually happened. Maybe Sophia had the Jason Statham ability (which is the ability to be as cinematically unrealistic as possible), or maybe she developed gills just like Kevin Costner in Waterworld. Either way, it’s now 3-years-later and I can’t remember exactly how but Sophia and Lilith both end up in Paris.
Sophia gets involved with some river police and also some shark activists and Lilith has found a new home Under Paris, in the river Seine. The mayor (poor Mayors always get a bad rep in shark movies) is hearing nothing about the dangers and, of course, a triathlon is happening in the very river where Lilith is.
If you’re looking for characters with ocean depth, then unless you’re a block of dead, floating driftwood, I don’t think you could find many similarities. All of the characters seemed to be so paper thin that I didn’t care about ANY of them. And, as for Sophia, she just annoyed me. Halfway through the film, I had made the decision, I am on the shark’s side – GO GET ‘EM LILITH.
We definitely have some questionable CGI but I did think a lot of it looked superb. It seemed it was the epic shark kills the FX couldn’t handle and to be honest, I didn’t think it needed them to be effective. The effectiveness came from the poorly lit murky waters and great use of sound design. We didn’t really need to see the sharks to feel the fear.
There were also moments of pure dread that were done so well. I don’t want to be spoiling Under Paris too much but I will tell you that we do get more than one shark. And they make their nest deep in the catacombs which was an excellent lair for the man-eaters. The murky waters with skulls everywhere, looked like the sharks had been dining there for years and decorating the walls with the skulls of their dinner.
The gore is plentiful and the kill-count is big although not as extreme as us Gens fans would like. I can understand with theatrical releases, the need to tone down the gore to get more young asses on the cinema seats, but when it seems you don’t have those restrictions with a streaming service, why wasn’t this more hardcore?
OVERALL
A fun but flawed shark movie. The acting was great, just not the one-dimensional characters. When the credits rolled, I enjoyed it more than I hated it. It caught me off guard too and delivered a really great ending that already seemed better than the entirety of the the film. I have a feeling we will be getting Under Paris 2 (Above Paris?) and I am here for it.
You can now check out Under Paris on Netflix. Let me know what you think!
5.5/10
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