‘Under Paris’ review: sacre deep bleu sea! there’s a killer shark in the Seine

The phrase “sewer tour”, to these delicate sensibilities, should only ever refer to the Reform UK battle bus. Beneath the streets of Paris however, where an ornate catacomb system mirrors the boulevards above, such pungent tours have been operating for years; the miracle is that it’s taken so long for the “this, but whack a giant shark in it” crew to get their gaping razor jaws into them.

Enter – at speed and from, um, murkier depths than usual – Netflix’s Under Paris, here to put several different kinds of fin into French cinema. Awkwardly dubbed into English, it follows the limb-smattered trail of Beacon 7, a giant shark which has evolved to both survive in polluted freshwaters (because, presumably, sporks) and self-reproduce from a young age without a mate. Having made soggy steak tartare of the team that raised it – led by shark-widowed marine scientist Sophia (Bérénice Bejo) – the beast makes for the Seine and the catacombs beyond, there to spawn an ever-growing swarm of man-eating babies just in time for a Triathlon event to fill the river with delicious swimmers. After all, as we discover yet again, it is deranged mayoral policy the world over to prioritise watersports over shark warnings.

With chomp fodder provided by disposable (largely non-white, it’s worth pointing out) police diving teams and a band of shark-huggers called the Save Our Seas Collective – whose idealistic romance story between activists Mika (Lia Leviant) and Ben (Nagisa Morimoto) comes to a chewy end – the environmentalist message is jettisoned early on in favour of concocting ever more extreme (literal) bloodbaths. One feeding frenzy in a catacomb chamber is particularly wild and claustrophobic, while the final Triathlon attack becomes rather beautifully apocalyptic.

Since no funding has come from any British water suppliers, the film thankfully avoids any shitsharks barrelling out of turd festooned depths. What emerges instead is a slightly more scientific, waterway-based Sharknado with no slack to a pace that glides along like a Megalodon through water, the bare minimum of emotional character development getting in the way of scenes of people being pulled out of thrashing canals, forgetting their legs. Bejo gives all the silliness some genuine gravitas and Beacon 7, as much as a big shark is a big shark is a big shark, benefits from a certain amount of classic horror menace, having evolved from localised threat to the odd paddle-boarder into an existential threat to humanity as serious as any Alien or Predator.

Under Paris, then is a cheesy yet canny creature feature romp with gritty Gallic bite, taking itself – enjoyably – rather more seriously than it deserves. A standalone semi-classic of the genre perhaps, although the ending leaves space wide open for many a sequel set in cities across the globe, in the tourist-friendly Olympus Has Fallen vein. If so, we’re gonna need a bigger Stoke…

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