As someone who adores Jaws, I make it a point to see just about every shark movie out there.  Most of them bite (as in suck).  Under Paris is a new shark movie with a new premise, one that has generated a lot of positive buzz.  It isn’t the first shark movie to take place in fresh water, and it probably won’t be the last.  It actually works, at least up to a point.  Ultimately, however, it swims way past credulity — but I’m guessing that believability isn’t the point with such a film.

Xavier Gens’ story takes place first in the Northern Pacific, where a big Mako shark named Lilith kills most of a scientific team investigating her, then three years later in Paris, where Lilith arrives with a special purpose in mind — just before a big triathlon match to be broadcast around the world.  The surviving scientist, Sophia (Bérénice Bejo), is stunned to find Lilith in Paris, and pressured into helping getting her away before she can chomp through the swimming competition.  Sophia has to work with crazy environmentalists, smug city officials and even the French Army before the big climax.  And it is a big, wild, eye popping climax.

Much of this is familiar, from the “survivor syndrome” that haunts Sophia to the crazy Parisian mayor (Anne Marivin) (much like Murray Hamilton in Jaws), and the quietly effective way the shark is largely kept out of sight until its quick, violent attacks.  Small details like the tooth marks on the sunken car and large details like the art design of the Parisian catacombs are very much appreciated.  Then it all goes kablooey in the final half-hour, when all scientific sensibility is abandoned, over and over again.  It’s a big finale with lots of bloodshed (though very little blood), lots of explosions and dumb people making dumb decisions.

This is a movie I really want to like.  Ultimately it swims too close to the type of exploitive garbage made by The Asylum, bad moviemakers making extremely bad movies.  It concludes with actions that cannot be explained rationally or dramatically, even though it is admittedly kind of cool.  At least a couple of the most deserving characters find themselves becoming lunch bait; that was rewarding.  The effects are decent; tension is created and maintained; it’s the human element that is most disappointing, especially as people who ought to know better do not seem afraid of the thing they are hunting, and which ends up hunting them.  ☆ ☆.  14 February 2025.