A shark in the Seine is the whole irresistible hook of Netflix’s Under Paris (Sous la Seine): as Paris prepares to host an international triathlon, marine biologist Sophia Assalas, activist Mika and river-police commander Adil try to stop a growing threat. The 2024 French thriller uses that absurdly compact setup to move from ecological suspense toward full-scale shark-disaster spectacle. It is not literally every shark movie at once, but its changing tone makes the comparison apt.
How the Seine becomes a shark-movie setting
Directed by Xavier Gens, Under Paris opens with Sophia tracking a shark nicknamed Lilith. Five years after an earlier expedition, activist Mika reports a large shark in the Seine shortly before the World Triathlon Championships. Sophia, Mika and Adil attempt to avert a catastrophe while the city faces the prospect of a major public event becoming a disaster zone. Netflix’s official guide identifies Bérénice Bejo as Sophia, Léa Léviant as Mika and Nassim Lyes as Adil.
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Midnight In Paris | $26.95 | Buy on Amazon |
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Blu-Ray - Belle & Sebastien Collection (3 Blu-Ray) (1 Blu-ray) [Region Free] [Blu-ray] | $29.09 | Buy on Amazon |
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Un Monstre à Paris - Combo Blu-ray 3D active + DVD | $60.00 | Buy on Amazon |
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The river gives the familiar predator premise a distinctive twist. Rather than placing a shark in open ocean or a beach resort, the film brings the danger into the heart of Paris, where the threat intersects with civic preparations, public safety and competing priorities. That setting helps the movie shift between a science-flavored pursuit, an activist story and a disaster thriller.
Why it can feel like several shark movies at once
Suspense and a science-fiction premise
The early setup asks viewers to take the threat seriously even though its central biology is fictional. Sophia’s expertise and the shark’s connection to a past expedition provide the thriller’s investigative frame; the river and approaching triathlon supply a ticking-clock problem.
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Activism and institutional hesitation
Mika’s environmental activism is part of the conflict, not merely background decoration. The story places warnings, public risk and institutional response in tension, giving the shark threat an allegorical dimension alongside its immediate danger.
Disaster-movie escalation
As events intensify, the film leans further into spectacular peril. The result is a tonal journey from a relatively grounded-seeming hunt toward outsized creature-feature chaos. That escalation is why the movie can evoke a grab bag of killer-shark conventions without actually containing every one of them.
Is the shark in the Seine realistic?
No: the freshwater premise is fictional. Netflix Tudum explains that mako sharks need saltwater, while the Seine is freshwater; the film’s account of Lilith’s rapid mutation is a plot device, not a real-world ecological claim. The distinction matters because the film borrows the language of marine science but eventually asks viewers to accept a deliberately extreme thriller premise. See Netflix’s explanation of the ending and the fictional shark premise.
The Guardian reviewer Stuart Heritage also raises the obvious realism questions—whether sharks are saltwater creatures and whether the Seine is too cold for one. Those questions underline the gap between the film’s setting and real-world plausibility; the available ecological explanation here is limited to Netflix’s account of mako sharks and freshwater.
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Is Under Paris fun, or too ridiculous?
That depends on how much a viewer enjoys escalating creature-feature excess. Heritage described it in The Guardian as “a knowingly improbable yet genuinely entertaining summer thriller” and read the premise as an environmental allegory. That is one critic’s judgment, not a guarantee that the film’s camp will work for everyone.
Rotten Tomatoes’ consensus describes its environmental themes and bloody thrills as “ridiculous fun,” but the audience and critic snapshots were notably different when accessed on October 8, 2026: the Tomatometer showed 63% from 41 reviews, while the Popcornmeter showed 30% from more than 1,000 ratings. These are dynamic figures, not fixed measures of the film’s reception. The gap suggests that its mix of ecological framing and wild spectacle has not landed the same way with every viewer.
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What the popularity figures do—and do not—say
In a June 21, 2024 report, AlloCiné said Netflix had disclosed 120 million hours watched and 69.6 million views for the film, which ranked fifth among Netflix’s non-English-language films at that time. Those are historical figures and a ranking from that reporting period, not a current placement.
For a more useful comparison with other shark thrillers, focus on tone, how much the film reveals of its creature, the novelty of its setting, the role of environmental themes and how far the climax departs from plausible thriller logic. Those are viewing lenses, not an official ranking: Under Paris is most distinctive when its Paris setting and ecological framing meet its appetite for increasingly outsize danger.
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