‘Under Paris’ (2024): Deep Blue Seine

Directed by: Xavier Gens || Produced by: Vincent Roget

Screenplay by: Yannick Dahan, Xavier Gens, Maud Heywang, Yaël Langmann || Starring: Bérénice Bejo, Nassim Lyes, Léa Léviant, Sandra Parfait, Aksel Ustun, Aurélia Petit

Music by: Alex Cortés, Anthony d’Amario, Edouard Rigaudière || Cinematography: Nicolas Massart || Edited by: Riwanon Le Beller || Country: France || Language: French

Running Time: 104 minutes

Shark attack movies are a specific breed of monster movie that are best defined by Steven Spielberg’s breakout hit, the original Hollywood summer blockbuster that is Jaws (1975), and little else. While monster movies as a whole, including those defined by exaggerated versions of real-life animal antagonists (see Lake Placid [1999], Black Water, Rogue [both 2007], and Crawl [2019] for crocodylians, Anaconda [1997, 2004] for boid snakes, The Edge [1997], Backcountry [2014], Into the Grizzly Maze [2015], et al. for ursids, The Ghosts and the Darkness [1996] and Beast [2022] for big felines, etc.), contain plenty of memorable adventures, those focusing on chondrichthyans are slim pickings despite the overwhelming influence and enduring quality of Jaws. I’m an avowed fan of Renny Harlin’s Deep Blue Sea (1999), myself, but most of the shark movie sub-subgrenre consists of talky, simplistic features like The Shallows (2016) and The Meg (2018, 2023) or the occasional minimalist eco-drama like Open Water (2004). Why no shark movie has ever approached the quality of Spielberg’s seminal film remains a mystery.

Lead Bérénice Bejo encounters a supposed large adult shortfin mako shark in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in Under Paris‘ prologue.

Enter Under Paris (French = “Sous la Seine” or Under the Seine) by experienced co-writer-director Xavier Gens, the filmmaker behind the infamous horror feature, Frontier(s) (2007). This latest notable shark feature claimed the top spot of Netflix’s feature-film charts this past month over recent theatrical releases like Hit Man (2023) perhaps due to its narrative homages to popular shark movies of the past. In both camerawork and script, the movie references Jaws, Deep Blue Sea, and The Meg across its first, second, and third acts in that order, all while incorporating various found-footage elements and sound FX that feel straight out of Aliens (1986). The film opens with a creepy shark attack in the open ocean before transitioning to various suspenseful near misses in the River Seine of Paris where the lamniform antagonists are most always implied, but rarely shown. Act Two explodes into a well choreographed, claustrophobic underground-underwater set-piece that channels the violent dark humor of multiple sequences from Deep Blue Sea, including one shot in particular that recalls Samuel L. Jackson’s memorable death in the Harlin film. Act Three, by contrast, builds to unpredictable, near apocalyptic stakes as its finale grows larger in scale through the end credits.

All the above sounds much like the memorable, unabashed genre faire I often champion about Netflix Original Films, so what are the problems here, if any? While the shark antagonist(s) are well rendered through decent computer generated imagery (CGI) and not overused throughout the first two acts, their movement animations are even more distracting than that of the CGI wildlife in Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey (2022). Anytime the cartilaginous fishes move quickly in a wide shot, they look fake, and the tension deflates from their respective set-pieces.

Compounding the film’s problems are its forgettable cast and characters. While I don’t expect a high-concept science-fiction monster-movie about sharks invading the Parisian metropolitan area to have deep characterizations, the arcs, chemistry, and dialogue of the film are so rote, so cliched, and so flavorless. Our main lead, Bérénice Bejo (yeah, the chick from The Artist! [2011]) is head and shoulders above the supporting cast beyond Parisian police diver Nassim Lyes, and even she isn’t that charismatic on-screen. If you wanna compare this movie’s human component — i.e., the bulk of the film — to other prominent non-Jaws shark movies, then I’m afraid middling guilty pleasures like Deep Blue Sea have way more personality, not to mention better and practical FX.

The police dive team of Paris patrol the River Seine for a freshwater-tolerant shark.

Ultimately, what saves a movie like Under Paris from genre irrelevance is its aforementioned creative screenplay, decent production values not counting its mediocre CGI, and willingness to take chances with its narrative scope. In my assessment, it either needed to bolster its digital FX budget by another $10 million (i.e., increase its overall production costs by about 50%) or strengthen the quality of its human characterizations. Under Paris just isn’t convincing enough from either an FX or acting standpoint to recommend outright, with no herculean shoestring budget-CGI a la Godzilla Minus One (2023) nor charming leads a la Arnold Schwarzenegger’s or Sylvester Stallone’s many cornball adventures. If you’re into creature-features as I am, Under Paris is worth a watch, but I can’t imagine anyone remembering this film a couple years from now.

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SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: With an unpredictable story structure and a fun premise, Under Paris breathes entertaining albeit temporary life into the limited, still underappreciated sub-subgenre of shark movies. You may think you know where the movie is going by the half-hour mark, but I assure you you don’t.

— However… as much as CGI has advanced this past quarter century and despite how many impressive digital FX have been brought to life by more modest productions, Under Paris demonstrates, as S. S. Rajamouli’s recent hits have shown, how unsatisfying they still often are.

—> ON THE FENCE

? I understand there is still much unexploded ordinance from the first two World Wars in France, but is there really that much, if any, in the middle of Paris?