IF crackers shark attack movies are your thing, Under Paris really takes the biscuit.
New to Netflix, this lowbrow French creature feature tells the absurd story of Sophia (Bérénice Béjo), a grieving scientist forced to face her tragic past when a giant shark appears in the Seine.
Director Xavier Gens holds the cheese and instead opts to really ham this monster film up with straight-faced performances and a clumsy climate action communiqué.
Lilith, a great big mako shark with a taste for cordon bleu morsels, is driven out of her contaminated home in the wretchedly expansive Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the fresh waters of the Seine through the heart of Paris.
After watching her husband and her team of researchers eaten alive by the irate shark, Sophia must again confront the deadly fish before it chows down on competitors in the Paris Triathlon.
A bigger boat is clearly needed, but with the film’s apex predator skulking around in the catacombs, Under Paris proves a real guilty pleasure for anyone looking for a glimpse of the romantic French capital, or just some blood-soaked shark attack mayhem.
Gens film is mindless, over the top, sensory overcharge, and shouldn’t be half as much fun as it is. It’s totally preposterous. It’s dumb, it’s dumber, but it has a big mouthy shark making light work of rude and elegant Frenchies – which is never a bad thing!
It’s not until the second half of the film that the toothsome killing machine really comes into its own and gives us spills and thrills aplenty to grin inanely at. Up to that point, marine biologist Sophia has problems convincing the authorities that her shark is even real.
By the film’s end though, Gens has done all in his power to have us forget all about that other shark – Spielberg’s shark, you know the one – and does so with real panache.
(3/5)
