Under Paris

Description

Under Paris is a quality French horror film with an original plot, aimed at a mainstream audience. Unfortunately, there’s no trace of the brutal intensity of Frontiers or The Divide here. Director Xavier Gens hasn’t made anything like that in a long time.

The plot can be summed up in a few words: mutated sharks attack Paris. The original title translates as Under the Seine (Sous la Seine). A bull shark swam into the Seine and adapted to fresh water. There, in the catacombs of Paris, it made itself a nest.

Overall, I liked the film. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but compared to most horror films the major studios have been churning out lately, Under Paris is a solid action-horror. And it’s yet another film that unambiguously shows that all the trouble comes from politicians.

The film has an open ending, and it’s funny that the sequel is being directed by Alexandre Aja, who once rose to fame thanks to the bloody horror High Tension (Haute tension, 2003). And after he directed the remake of The Hills Have Eyes (2006), he moved away from hard-core horror. In other words, the careers of Xavier Gens and Alexandre Aja are similar. Both started with bloody horror films, then moved on to experiments, some of which are quite successful.