With the official start of summer around the corner and the Paris Olympics just weeks away, it was inevitable that someone would come out with an aquatic thriller set in the City of Light. That someone is French filmmaker Xavier Gens, whose last film, FARANG (Mayhem!) starred Nassim Lyes, who co-stars in his newest film, UNDER PARIS.

French marine biologist Sophia Assalas (Bérénice Bejo, THE ARTIST) is out on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch looking at how sharks are adapting to their changing environment when one of her test subjects, a female shortfin mako named Lilith, suddenly arrives and chomps her way through Sophia’s team. Fast forward three years and Paris is gearing up for hosting the Olympics. When Mika (Léa Léviant) and her eco-activist pals track Lilith to the Seine, Sophia fears the worst. Marine police lieutenant Adil (Lyes) has his concerns over what might happen too, but the Mayor (Anne Marivin) doesn’t want to hear anything about a shark. The Paris Triathlon is just 24 hours away and no apex predator is going to stop that high-profile event from moving forward.

UNDER PARIS goes exactly where you think it’s going to go but Gens makes sure it’s a fun ride along the way. Unlike JAWS, where the tension builds until the audience sees the shark strike, Gens dives right into the deep end and shows us Lilith, dorsal fin and all. Nevertheless, the film has its share of jump scares, especially when all we see is a shadow zipping across the screen. Lilith, for her part, is an equal opportunity feeder. Everyone is fair game for her evidently insatiable appetite and you might just find yourself cheering for her after a few spectacular kills. As with so many shark films that came before it, don’t try to analyse the plot too closely because quite a bit doesn’t make sense but one thing that isn’t fiction is that there really are freshwater sharks out there. Bull sharks can live in both salt and fresh water and they have been sighted in rivers from the US to Australia.

Not surprisingly, Paris is on full display here with plenty of postcard shots of the Eiffel Tower and all the picturesque bridges that cross the Seine. It’s nice to see that shark films don’t all have to take place in the US. And, as one of my colleagues correctly pointed out, Paris seemingly has what may be the best looking marine police unit around.

UNDER PARIS is streaming now on Netflix. Sure, it’s predicable for the most part but it is a lot of fun. It also has one heck of a killer ending. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

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