Sous la Seine

A movie is not good when you are rooting for the villian. In this case, the shark was my superhero.

First of all, with 50 years of advanced technology, robotics, cgi and advancement in film....that sharks today look less realistic than Jaws? It is insane how fake today's sharks look.

To the story...it follows every cliche, nothing is original here, with scenes and dialogues almost straight out of Jaws or Deep Blue Sea.

Acting is way over-the-top, dialogue consists of screaming or incesseantly yelling someone's name. Sharks are fake looking, about the same level as a Sharknado And you cannot find one person making smart decisions. This is a complete miss.

Starting with the fact that the main premise of the film, sharks in fresh water, is nonsense, the script itself was very empty of content. Like any horror films premises don't make sense and I guess that's okay with the genre? I don't know because I am not a fan of horror movies but I do enjoy suspense and that is what made me watch it in the first place but there was little to no suspense. No plot depth. Not much good to it actually. There are no good dialogues, no good character development and you don't really feel any attachment whatsoever to any of the characters so you don't care what happens to them. If that is not a sample of bad scriptwriting, I don't know what is. The cinematography is also plain and quite insipid... But hey, I enjoyed the lovely views of Paris a lot and that's why I gave it a 4 and not a 1.

To each his own, I think people are taking this way too seriously forgetting it's just a shark movie.

Me, I love a good stupid movie, I really do and when you couple that with some over the top shark shenanigans, you're usually in for a good time. For the most part I enjoyed Under Paris but I think the movie's biggest problem is it doesn't know whether it wants to be a serious study as to how negatively humanity has affected nature (the Siene river is one of the most polluted rivers in the world) or just a fun action movie a la The Meg. The first half of the movie wants so badly to be Jaws, you can almost hear the theme music playing every time Sophia has a flashback, but once they go into the catacombs and discover Lilith's nest, things veer into the realm of the ridiculous, admittedly the best aspects of the film.

You know how there's a whole set of films that's based on stupid people making stupid decisions?

Person 1: DON'T DO IT!

Person 2: *proceeds to do it anyway and gets killed* Audience: SHE TOLD YOU NOT TO DO IT! How dumb are you!?

Those types movies. However, if they're done well, you don't mind the stupidity in it and play along.

I kept reading "If you liked Jaws, you'll enjoy Under Paris." "One of the best Shark films since Jaws" - High praise. So, I had to watch it, despite low scores.

The dumb people in this film don't listen, do dumb things, and get killed. But it's been filmed well; it's intense, the sound design and cinematography keep you engaged. Shark graphics - decent enough. It's got enough going on to keep you engaged, the plot is not boring at all. The ending may have you scratching your head though.

Here's a perspective that I don't think anybody is considering - I don't know the first thing about Shark Biology or marine evolution, but I looked at the 'Sharks' as a metaphor for 'Climate Change' and the plot AND the ending suddenly made so much more sense. That made me feel like the movie was actually better than people are making it out to be.

Either that, or I'm just trying to convince myself that I didn't waste 2 hours watching stupid people make stupid decisions.

The actors are ok, the script is pretty much as bad as any shark movie, but it lacks explanation about why the shark goes to Paris, why has it tripled in size, why it can self reproduce etc... a bit of logic never hurts.

The main focus is actually the Olympic Games in Paris put in the limelight by the lack of preparation from Paris City Hall. Anne Marivin does a good job playing a completely incompetent, dishonest, ruthless, politically driven mayor of Paris that everyone will recognize easily. The only differences are that she's pretty and she can speak French. Shame she doesn't get gulped by the shark.

Ok movie, worth a watch just to break the rhythm of the Netflix TV series.