Under Paris (France, 2024)

I’ve been following the career of Xavier Gens with interest since his 2007 debut, Frontier(s). Its frenetic mash-up of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and House of 1000 Corpses, with added Nazis, was bloody good fun. While nothing he has made since has grabbed me quite as much, I still found The Divide and Cold Skin engaging and ambitious. So when I heard that Gens had made a shark film set in the Paris catacombs, I knew that Under Paris had to be on my list this year.

As I mentioned in last year’s review of 47 Metres Down, I’m a sucker for horror films about sharks. With the exception of Jaws, most of the shark movies I grew up with were exploitation films, made for pocket change and shot in someone’s swimming pool. You’d be lucky if you actually glimpsed a shark, and even then it would be badly edited stock footage. Still, I still loved them.

With the exception of soulless dreck like Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus — Exhibit A in any argument about how you can’t set out to make a cult film — most recent shark movies have been tense thrillers shot by filmmakers who know what they’re doing. It’s been a while since I’ve seen something schlocky and daft come out of the genre. Well, I’m happy to report that Under Paris may be the dumbest shark film I’ve seen. And it’s glorious!

Under Paris is currently streaming on Netflix in the UK.

Synopsis

Oceanic researcher Sophia Assalas and her colleagues are poking around under the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, looking for Lilith, a mako shark they tagged last year. Some combination of pollution, global warming, and plot contrivances have mutated Lilith, who is now the size of a great white and leader of her very own pack of makos. Before the team have a chance to learn anything useful, Lilith chows down on them, leaving Assalas as the sole survivor.

Fast forward a few years and Assalas is employed at an aquarium in Paris, still working through her trauma. She is approached by a pair of ecological activists who have a special interest in protecting sharks. They have tracked Lilith’s beacon, discovering that she has improbably found her way to the River Seine. Don’t expect a reason for this — it’s not that kind of film.

Lilith may be responsible for a fatal attack in the river, but Assalas has trouble getting the authorities to take the threat seriously. Although she does eventually talk the river patrol around, the mayor of Paris just wants the whole thing covered up. There is a major triathlon coming up, which is seen as a trial run for the Paris Olympics, and the mayor has enough on her hands dealing with all the World War II ordinance people keep finding on the riverbed. You know, mayor problems.

Will Assalas manage to prevent the triathlon becoming a literal bloodbath? Can she really work with activists who care more about sharks than human lives? And is Lilith’s obsession with the catacombs just the beginning of her goth phase? Don’t worry about any of this and just enjoy the sharks!

General Thoughts

The whole premise of Under Paris is bizarre. A mutant mako shark is somehow affected by plastics and global warming, mutates in a variety of implausible ways, and then migrates to Paris for absolutely no reason. There, it meets up with the only survivor of the last time it encountered humans. It’s like Jaws IV, but dumber.

Speaking of Jaws, it’s hard not to imagine the mayor of Paris being written as “cartoon caricature of Amity’s mayor” She is narcissistic venality wrapped in a Chanel suit. The only thing that stops her being completely unbelievable is the distressing number of real politicians in the same mould.

The underwater scenes in the murky Seine are really quite tense. There is almost no visibility, and we constantly feel like Lilith could be lurking anywhere. When actual attacks happen, they almost come as a relief.

The handheld tracker following Lilith’s beacon harks back to Aliens. It’s all very well knowing there’s a giant mutant mako 10 metres away, but it doesn’t really help when you can’t see it. Even so, the device inevitably fritzes out at key moments before being disabled at the worst possible time. Under Paris has not met a genre trope it doesn’t like.

Verdict

Many years ago, I lost my ability to enjoy bad films ironically. It’s something I miss, as there’s real fun to in watching something terrible and having a good laugh. Happily, Under Paris seems to be just the right kind of bad to restore this ability. It helps that this is, largely, a well-made film, barring some jarring editing during action scenes. The visuals are slick and polished, easy to watch and get drawn into. The script, on the other hand, is aggressively stupid, and I kind of loved it.

I did keep wondering if Gens and his colleagues thought they were making a serious action/horror film. There is no obvious irony, no matter how ludicrous the story becomes, but I refuse to believe no one realised how daft this all is. Some of the set pieces are laugh-out-loud funny, especially when every action scene next to water turns into slapstick, with panicking extras knocking each other into the river to be devoured.

But as silly as the build-up is, nothing will prepare you for the climax of this film. Bad decisions and worse luck topple like gory dominos. I spent the last ten minutes of Under Paris in open-mouthed shock at the sheer bloody audacity of the whole thing. This is a film that does not understand the word “subtlety”, and bless it for that.

So is Under Paris a good film? Dear God, no! But is it worth watching? Yes, it absolutely is. You will probably be irritated at its unrepentant stupidity, and you may pull a muscle from rolling your eyes, but I guarantee you will be entertained.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on Twitter, BlueSky, Reddit, Discord, or lurking in the dark corners of your home.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (USA, 2021)
Tales That Witness Madness (UK, 1973)
When Evil Lurks (Argentina, 2023)
Under Paris (France, 2024)
In a Violent Nature (Canada, 2024)
Torso (Italy, 1973)
Titane (France, 2021)
Rorschach (USA, 2015)
The Coffee Table (Spain, 2024)
Dr Caligari (USA, 1989)
Bit (USA, 2020)
The Guard From Underground (Japan, 1992)
Oddity (Ireland, 2024)
Speak No Evil (Denmark/Netherlands, 2022)
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (USA, 1982)
Grave Torture (Indonesia, 2024)
Bedlam (USA, 1946)
The Innsmouth School For Girls (USA, 2023)
Daddy’s Head (UK, 2024)
All You Need Is Death (Ireland, 2024)
Eight Eyes (USA/Serbia, 2021)
Poor Things (Ireland/UK/USA, 2023)
Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye (Italy, 1973)
Longlegs (USA, 2024)
Night of Fear (Australia, 1973)
Stopmotion (UK, 2024)
Terrifier (USA, 2016)
Azrael (USA, 2024)
Faust (Germany, 1926)
Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (Hong Kong, 1991)
I Saw the TV Glow (USA, 2024)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.