UNDER PARIS 2024 | RECAP | MOVIE REVIEW | ENDING EXPLAINED
Today I am going to recap and explain a recently released Netflix shark horror movie called Under Paris. The movie opens with a marine scientist Sophia and her team of fellow scientists who are in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean. These guys are environmentalists and researchers, currently tracking their rescued sharks. One of them is currently under the pile of great Pacific garbage patch so these guys decide to dive in. Here Chris is Sophia's husband, he and his crew observes that the shark is stuck under the pile of plastic for days. It has bite marks all over its body which is a strange thing as nothing attacks sharks that easily. As Chris was observing a giant shark ferociously passed just beside him. Soon a pack of sharks started circling and hunting which too is strange as there are solitary hunters and territorials. Just then the crew observes a giant shark of about 7.5m called Lilith. They had rescued it three months ago and placed a tracker on it. Sophia is shocked to see her grow to this size just in three months. She was just 2.5m. She now asks Chris to grab her blood sample to analyze this abnormality. Chris hesitantly swam towards her, as he poked the dagger Lilith swam away with extreme speed. Soon it returned and attacked Chris. She killed him and attacked others. Sophia saw all this on the screen, to rescue them she jumped into the water with a tranquilizer gun. At first, Lilith observed her calmly as soon as Sophia started to fire, she attacked her. Sophia's leg gets stuck in a plastic mess and Lilith starts dragging that mess. The shark dragged her to great depths under the ocean before Sophia could cut loose the mess. She then managed to escape to shore but this deep dive impacted her mind as well as her body. She lost her husband and crew.
Now the story starts after three years in Paris two teenagers were scavenging scrap in the river Seine with magnets. Instead of finding a valuable item, they found an unexploded World War 2 bombshell. Soon Paris police arrived at the scene with Captain Angela. Officer Adil explains to the press that we have found hundreds of such unexploded shells in the river. we believe there are many more such shells in the river. Fishing with the magnet and scavenging in the river is prohibited yet kids sometimes do this. This guy and his team were the part of river petrol force whose job is to maintain safety on the river for the tourists. Hince this year Paris is hosting the world triathlon championship and the security on the river is more than normal.
After the incident, Sofia is now working as an instructor cam guide in a local aquarium, where she was teaching school kids about the environment and human's impact on it. Some kids had discovered her back story and made fun of it which upsets her. After the program a young teenager Mika greets her, she has been tracking the Shark Lilith for many months now and she is worried. Mika is a young energetic climate activist belonging to an NGO that aims to save aquatic life and the oceans. Her Ocean conservation group is well funded with equipment and volunteers. Se finds Sophia as the ideal role model in environmental activism as she has derived many things from research. She shows her base where they were tracking Lilith. Another young lady by the name of Ben shows her the shark's migration pattern. It had traveled all the way from the North Pacific Ocean to Paris through the river Seine. For the last 3 days, it has been there. Mika wanted to dive in to rescue her as she believed it got stuck there due to the wrong migration pattern.
Sophia was shocked to see this as first of all the data these kids were getting is not legal. These kids are hacking into the government's top-secret research facility and directly stealing it from there. Secondly, the sharks don't swim in freshwater they are open sea creatures, and Lilith being here is a little strange. Mika wanted to dive in to check this. She needed Sophia's help but she refused and rushed back to her house.
It turns out, she is suffering from PTSD after the incident and is on medication to cope with this. She is mentally not fit to do the activism. Yet she decides to help them as much as possible because the evidence is very clear. She just can't ignore it, at least she could inform the police about it.
But these two hyperactive kids decide to go ahead without her. Apparently, there was an accident a few days ago where one car had ditched into the river and the driver was missing. Mika believes it to be the shark attack, she dives in to find some evidence about it. As she started searching the shark sneakly rushed behind her. On the surface, Ben sees Adil and his police team, She gets scared and she run like hell leaving Mika underwater on her own. Adil saw Mika's boat and arrested her. On their way to the police station, they stopped at one point where one homeless guy Marcus was staying. They wanted him to move out for the next month as they wanted to show the good image of Paris to the world. They didn't want the TV cameras to show the homeless staying on the riverfront to the whole world.
Sophia too started tracking the shark and reached the riverfront. At one place where the dog started barking mysteriously sensing the danger. The tracker was showing the presence of the Shark but due to the dark nothing was visible.
At the police station, Mika tries to explain the sharp situation to Adil who rejects it. He thinks of her as a nut case. The clash between the police and the activists was very common hence he neglected her and held her at the station for the night.
The next morning while tracking the Shark she shouted at one kid who was very close to the river. Just then she got a call from Adil who was at the other end of the river. The homeless guy Marcus was dead, he was cut into pieces which seemed like a shark attack. After seeing this Adil and his team took Mika's shark theory seriously and they wanted Sophia's opinion as Mika had told them about her.
Seeing this incident police chief permitted diving into the river to confirm the news. But Sophia is scared like hell, she warns them that Lilith is no ordinary Shark, there is something off with it. The police took the advice, and dived in. Soon they found it roaming, it was magnificent and big. They were about to shoot at her when Mika ordered Ben to switch off the signal. She hesitantly did that and the shark disappeared from their screen.
The underwater team after confirming its presence then fanatically swam upwards and they were scared. Adil too confirms it on the sonar. Later Sophia met Mika and Ben, she was clearly angry at them as they had put the lives of those officers at risk. But Mika defended her stance by saying Lilith is lonely, needs help and they will do whatever they can.
Adil now asks the police chief Angela to release this information to the press, which she refuses. Since the championship is a week away, the government has invested tons of money in it. It was not her call to make. Aadil later searched for Sophia and found out her history. Meanwhile, Mika and the team released the information regarding Lilith to the whole world where she says the sharks are becoming an endangered species with nearly 100 million of them being hunted worldwide for cosmetic products. Here the shark Lilith is stuck in the river and we need volunteers to help her move out. This news spread like wildfire across all media outlets around the world and the mayor of Paris was furious about it.
She asked the police chief to fix this issue as early as possible as they had invested 1.7 billion dollars on the redevelopment of the riverfront for the championship. She was ready to provide any help that was required to get rid of this problem. Angela calls the backup force. Since Lilirh's beacon was off finding her in this river was quite a challenge in itself. Luckily Ben shows up to help them as she has reactivated the beacon, she knows where Shark is.
To her surprise and to everyone's surprise, the Shark is not in the river but it is in the underground water catacombs beside the river. These are the vast network of ossuaries filled up with water channels under the Paris. Sophia and the police team decided to go there with all their gear meanwhile Mika and her group of about 50 volunteers were already there. They too wanted to capture it and then release it into the ocean. Mika against the wishes of Ben decides to dive in, she uses an impulse Emmiter device to attract the Shark. Before the Shark could come here the police arrived with their backup. They ordered these kids to get out immediately as the Shark was known to be hostile and unpredictable. But kids were ignorant and they didn't listen.
Soon two Sharks started circling Mika and one of them was Lilith's offspring. Meaning Lilith had given birth to her baby in this freshwater. Sophia started screaming at Mika to get out of the water immediately but she felt sharks won't attack us unless we attacked them first. Adil being an officer can't just stay on the ground, he jumped into the water to drag her out. This spooked Lilith, it started attacking and severed Mika into pieces. All the kids saw this in horror, as they started running causing stamped. Many of them fell to the water and sharks started feeding on them. One officer also fell into the water. The remaining officers started shooting at the stocks but it was not enough, there was a total blood bath. Meanwhile, the baby Shark died in this whole affair with 12 other kids.
Sophia later conducts the autopsy of the baby shark and she learns a great deal about it. Lilith was one of its kind, a new Shark species that had evolved due to harsher environmental pollution. The baby Shark is 3 months old yet it is 2.5 meters long and has grown up exponentially in size. It is pregnant too, meaning these new types of shark species could reproduce rapidly. Sofia was scared to find this observation as in her opinion if allowed these new shark species could overtake the ocean and for that matter the human life on earth in no time. Humans are dependent on oceans for all of their trade. If oceans become unhabitable then the survival of the human race itself is at risk. She agrees to kill Lalith.
The mayor is furious about this incident as so many people have died. instead of canceling the event she brushes it under the carpet as an accident. She orders the military to take over the operation as the general promises her that they are more equipped and qualified to handle the job. She goes on air and rubbishes the idea of sharks being present in the river and terms it as just rumors.
Adil Sofia and his team were not convinced about this. They volunteered to kill that shark on their own, and Angela too agreed to this. Sofia comes up with a plan of louring the shark to one remote area with the infrared impulse emulator and then blowing her up with explosives.
On the day of the championship, the Mayor inaugurated the event at the other hand and participants jumped into the water. Sophia, Adil, and his team of officers too dived into the water. To their surprise, there was not one Shark but there were hundreds of sharks. It seemed in the last 3 years Lilith had given many births and all of its outsprings were now here from the larger ocean. The team now fixed the explosives at one point but soon they were surrounded by the Shark. One sacrificed himself to make the way for others to get out. Sophia quickly grabbed Adil and the remote detonator. With the help of an underwater portable boat, she started running from that place at a very high speed as the sharks started following her. In a panic, she detonated explosives. Sure it killed many but they were in hundreds in number. These guys somehow made their way to the top and they seemed rescued but to their shock, the lilith saw all this. It started circling the boat. With ferocious force, it toppled the boat, and once again all of these guys were in the water. Except for Adil and Sophia all of the others were picked up by Shark.
At the same time, Lilith sensed the approaching swimmers of the tournament. It charged at them, picked them one by one. Once again panic and stamped occurs. This time military guys, who were new here, started firing at her at will. Some bullets get hit the unexploded WW2 shells which start to explode. Due to the cascading effect, many more shells explode, turning this into mayhem. Bridges and catacombs exploded causing a tsunami of water. Adil and Sophia are washed away in this and the mayor gets crushed. In the end, we see these two on top of a place where the entire Paris is underwater with infested sharks. With this, the movie ends. The ending is abrupt and ambiguous. In the end credit scene, we see all major rivers across the globe are invested with sharks symbolizing they have overtaken the human world. What happens with Adil and Sophia is anybody's guess.
This is by no means a great shark movie or for that matter a shark movie at all. It is a climate change hit piece. The producer is trying to push the agenda of climate change and its impact on aquatic life through this. But it doesn't land. The film is a comedy in many places, shark attacks are scary but the logic of self-overpopulating sharks is laughable. This is certainly a belove-average movie with a bad script. but a good popcorn brainless piece. Hope you liked this video.