Film Review

Under Paris (2024) — Bon-jaws

To save Paris from a bloodbath, a grieving scientist is forced to face her tragic past when a giant shark appears in the Seine.

The emergence and extreme profligacy of the “sharksploitation” sub-genre is a little confusing to me. Is it just the influence of Jaws (1975)? Sure, that’s a great movie, but it inspired one pointless sequel, followed by a trashy third, and then a fourth that’s one of the worst films ever made. Moreover, Jaws novelist Peter Benchley has gone on record to say the subsequent cottage industry of shark thrillers has harmed the preservation of these majestic ocean animals, painting them as antagonists when of course we present a far greater threat to them than they do to us. Still, we’re a species that looks set to elect Donald Trump twice and allow another genocide to happen in the Middle East, so we’re not big on learning lessons.

I tend to take what Roger Ebert called a generic approach to film criticism, where I look at the genre of a film and ask if it’s fulfilling its requirements. With this in mind, Netflix’s Gallic addition to the…