Did subscribers take the bait when Netflix quietly dropped a French shark attack movie in the stream? People are definitely eating it up...but why?
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Did subscribers take the bait when Netflix quietly dropped a French shark attack movie
00:04in the stream? People are definitely eating it up. But why?
00:08I don't understand. How is this possible?"
00:13Hype from beloved celebrities definitely helps, especially when it comes courtesy of horror
00:17master Stephen King. Earlier this month, the author took to X, formerly Twitter, to proclaim,
00:22"...I thought Under Paris would be a jokey movie, like Sharknado, but Twitter convinced
00:26me to give it a watch, and it's really quite good. The last 25 minutes were amazing."
00:30The film follows Sophia, a scientist who suffers a major blow when her entire team is killed
00:34by Lilith, a dangerous Mako shark they'd been tracking and studying. Though she quits the
00:39shark game for a while, she's dragged back into the fray when Mika, an environmental
00:43activist, sounds the alarm about a shark showing up in the Seine River.
00:47And wouldn't you know it, it's the same shark that killed all of Sophia's colleagues. Being
00:51that it's only a matter of days until the World Triathlon Championship is set to take
00:54place, Sophia, Mika, and a cop named Adil are forced to face the shark, and an indifferent
00:59mayor, in hopes of averting a literal bloodbath. All of it is played pretty straight, but there's
01:04definitely a sense of humor to the material, and that was intentional. According to director
01:08Xavier Gens, he told Variety,
01:10"...the whole idea was to take what we observe in French society and from politicians and
01:14caricature some of it. We mocked all of it, and in some cases didn't need to caricature
01:19that much. We really had fun inventing an alternate reality where we highlight human
01:22stupidity and show everyone making the wrong decisions."
01:26Speaking of stupidity, we know what you're thinking. Could a Mako shark actually end
01:30up in the Seine? Being that it isn't a freshwater shark, the answer would likely be no in normal
01:34circumstances. Hold off on your criticisms, though, because it's all part of the plot,
01:38which is connected to the ongoing climate crisis and the increasingly troubling state
01:42of the world's oceans, as Mika explains to Sophia after she says that it can't be possible.
01:47With the effects of climate change and pollution, the sharks have completely changed their behavior.
01:50She got here by mistake, and now she's just trying to survive."
01:53Plot points aside, though, it really is highly unlikely, and not just because of the water.
01:57As Ali Hood, director of conservation at the Shark Trust, told Metro,
02:01"...the Seine is some 485 miles long and navigable by ocean-going ships for 75 miles of that
02:07length, at which point both ships and sea creatures alike meet the first of many locks
02:11that sit between the open ocean and Paris."
02:13The diversity of sharks and rays in the English Channel is rich, but none of them show a
02:16predilection for fresh water or the capacity to work a lock gate. Whatever, though, people
02:21still show up in droves to watch shark attack movies, even if they're dumb and unbelievable.
02:26Look at the Meg movies of recent years. Both have pretty abysmal Rotten Tomatoes scores,
02:30but they made decent profits at the box office. As long as there's a topical angle or an action
02:35star leading the cast, people are more than willing to suspend their disbelief for a few
02:38hours and watch a Man vs. Nature story.
02:42"...hell yeah."
02:43Under Paris doesn't have a Jason Statham-level lead by any means, but it does have a lot
02:48going for it in the topical angle department. Not only is climate change constantly at the
02:52forefront of discussion in today's political hellscape, but Paris — and the Seine specifically
02:57— are globally relevant at the moment thanks to the upcoming Olympic Games.
03:01For the 2024 Games, competitors will likely be allowed to swim in the Seine for the first
03:05time in nearly 100 years. Why such a long wait? Due to various human-related factors,
03:10mainly industrialization and agriculture, the river became a host to incredibly high
03:15levels of bacteria, fertilizers, and other harmful substances. Only in recent years has
03:19France been able to slowly reverse the effects of this pollution.
03:23We try to not drink too much, but a few sips is kind of okay."
03:28When they swim in the Seine during the Olympic Games, it goes without saying that competitors
03:33will have enough non-shark-related anxieties to deal with.
03:40For more UN videos visit www.un.org