Like a shark in a swimming pool – surely everyone’s worst nightmare – Netflix’s new aquatic horror flick Under Paris has appeared from nowhere and set about scaring viewers witless. Already a worldwide smash on the streamer, it’s a B-movie that occupies that vast space between Jaws and Sharknado in the canon of shark movies: with the slick underwater scares of one and the seemingly deranged premise of the other.
Directed by Xavier Gens (Gangs of London), the plot follows a grieving oceanographer (Bérénice Bejo), a handful of Paris cops and a clutch of environmental activists as they discover that a killer shark has mutated, travelled thousands of miles and set up base in the Seine River, ready to feast on unwary Parisians. Just when you thought it was safe to be literally anywhere near water…
But could this scenario actually happen? Should we be steering politely but firmly around all major waterways, from the Seine, to the Thames, to the East River, to that small but suspiciously murky-looking stream in the park? We asked James Wright, Senior Curator at SEA LIFE London Aquarium, to sort the scientific fact from the spurious-but-entertaining fiction in Under Paris.
What is Under Paris about?
The Artist’s Bérénice Bejo is Sophia, a marine biologist whose husband is taken by a mako while the pair are on a scientific mission to chart the impact of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on shark behaviour. The impact turns out to be significant: the shark, named Lilith, has mutated and grown to a formidable seven metres. It’s also developed a taste for human. The French kind, mainly.
Fast forward three years and Sophia is in Paris. So, it turns out, is Lilith, who has swum up the Seine and made a home in the river’s dark, watery catacombs.
Worse news, the city has a big triathlon on the cards and a Amity Island-ish mayor who won’t be deterred by a few mysterious fatalities just because there are shark bites on the corpses. Sophia, environmentalist Mika (Léa Léviant) and police diver Adil (Nassim Lyes) are left to make a terrifying discovery: Lilith has managed to reproduce on her own and her sharky brood is at large in the river…
Is Under Paris based on a true story?
Absolutely not. ‘There’s as much scientific fact in this film as there is in Aliens,’ says Wright. Sharks, the London Aquarium Senior Curator stresses, aren’t ‘mindless killers’ and would not swim aggressively into a group of humans – as happens when Lilith and her offspring chow down on the triathletes in Under Paris. ‘Sharks have a lateral line going down their bodies which enables them to sense pressure changes in the water, and they have these fluid-filled electro receptors called the Ampullae of Lorenzini, so if a shark was swimming underneath a load of people, they’d be getting so many electrical impulses and noise vibrations. If you were a shark in that scenario, you’d be going the opposite way.’
The idea of a mass attack by mako sharks is just as far-fetched. ‘A shark's not going to just pile into a hundred people swimming,’ says Wright.
What kind of shark is in Under Paris?
The shark depicted in Under Paris is a supersized, seven-metre shortfin mako, a rare antagonist to a movie subgenre usually dominated by the Great White (Jaws, The Shallows), reef sharks (Open Water), and even prehistoric Megalodons (The Meg). These bullet-fast ocean predators do have some previous as Hollywood villains thanks to Deep Blue Sea, a movie in which, like here, they mutated into killing machines.
‘I was surprised that they picked a mako in this movie,’ says Wright. ‘It looks more like a Great White, because makos don't get anywhere near that size. They’re very lightweight and it's hard to even explain just how fast they are. They are in our waters, but they’re oceangoing pelagic wanderers [so they’re travel].’
Would they attack a human? ‘An attack from a mako shark would be possibly defensive or a confused reaction,’ says Wright. ‘They’ve not got the dentation of a tiger shark or Great White to start biting chunks off people. If it was a choice of going to be in a tank with a mako or in an enclosure with a chimpanzee, I know where I'd rather be.’
Can sharks reproduce asexually?
Under Paris posits the terrifying idea that, like Godzilla in the 1998 movie, Lilith can create a nest of baby sharks on her own. This part of the movie is more than plausible, because sharks are known to reproduce without a mate. ‘That's not in the realms of science fiction,’ explains Wright. ‘Because lower vertebrates have the ability to reproduce without a mate via a process called parthenogenesis.’
Could sharks swim into an urban waterway?
They can, and do, in some tidal waterways like the Brisbane River. But don’t expect to see big sharks in less salinated European rivers like the Thames and the Seine, though – least of all a mako. ‘It's a very visual predator,’ says Wright, ‘so it's not going to be looking to swim into dirty, cloudy rivers like a bull shark would.’
The expert view on Under Paris? ‘Go enjoy it, have a scare, but remember that it’s not real.’
Under Paris is streaming on Netflix worldwide now. For more information on the sharks at SEA LIFE London Aquarium, head to the official site.
🦈 If not Paris, then where? This tool shows the destinations where you’re most likely to get attacked by a shark.