That’s no ironic four-star rating either. While this would easily go straight into the Top Ten Guilty Pleasures the fact that it’s so darn good takes it out of the So Bad It’s Good bracket. Netflix has taken time off from beating down Oscar’s door with $200 million arthouse epics to steal summer. In a Hollywood galaxy a long long time ago this is the kind of unexpected blockbuster that would have sneaked into cinemas on Memorial Day as counter-programming and hit the jackpot.
As well as tearing up with astonishing confidence every trope in the monster playbook and not even stooping to attempt the kind of artistic kudos that lassooed so much critical acclaim for Godzilla Minus One, this is truly a terrific stomp. And it hoodwinks the audience along the way. From the onset it looked more like Jaws Goes Woke with eco warriors determined to save a thriller killer no matter how many humans he gulps down. And then there was a side helping of gaga science of the Moonfall variety, in this case that a shark had beaten evolution by being able to breathe freshwater as well as the saltwater of its natural habitat (in case you don’t know a shark should suffocate in freshwater). Plus it grows at an unprecedented rate and it don’t need no male to replicate and can get pregnant within a month or so of being born.

So it’s not just one shark swimming up the River Seine in Paris, France, and hiding out among the skull-sodden catacombs, but it’s hundreds of the darned monsters. And the mayor of Paris is all set with a giant lunch box when she fires the starting gun for the Triathlon. So you’ve got hundreds of red-hatted swimmers heading in the direction of a giant shark. Not to mention that there’s all these unexploded shells loitering at the bottom of the Seine and what with all the commotion one way or another they are apt to go off and bring down all the pretty bridges across the river, the apocalypse so stunning you’re pretty well astonished that in all the carnage the Eiffel Tower remains standing.
So how the heck did we get to this? Well, three years previously, oceanologist Sophia (Berenice Bejo) has been tracking a particular shark near Hawaii in (eco-nod number one) the Pacific Garbage Patch only to watch the beastie gobble up her husband and the rest of her diving team. So now, turns out the shark still has an electronic tag and somehow (gaga science of course) it has made its way 7,500 miles to Paris where the beacon is picked up by eco warrior and computer whiz Mika (Lea Leviant) and her girlfriend Ben (Nagisa Morimoto) who head up Save Our Seas which aims to stop sharks being slaughtered.
Sophia alerts disbelieving cops (who, by the way, are really nice to homeless guys) to the problem and eventually, minus cameras of course, they take to the water. Up to this point all we get are brief glimpses of a fin and a flashing shape but once Mika and Ben decide to put into action their own ploy and assemble dozens of their followers in the catacombs where the cops are chasing the shark then all hell breaks loose. The shark’s no respecter of eco-dopes and the eco-dopes prove no respecters of each other, trampling over each other in the water once the feeding bell rings. This is the kind of movie where nobody gets hauled out of water unless they’re going to be missing their legs.
Having assembled all the usual suspects – venal mayor desperate to hide the truth, river instead of beach teeming with potential victims, a great backdrop in the shape of the catacombs – then director Xavier Gens breaks all the rules. There’s no Jason Statham here to knock sense into the beast, and there’s no clever Quint, and there’s no keeping the public out of harm’s way. Instead this is Joe Dante with a bucket of style. Tangle with sharks and you’re gonna get yours is the message here not the usual let’s have a happy ending.
There’s are some stunning images. Torches of dead cops float down to a skull-strewn river bed, an underwater flare reveals just how many sharks there are, a shark dragging a string of yellow buoys heads towards swimmers decked out in red caps, the bridges tumbling down, the ensuing tsumani (bet you never expected that). And on top of that there are some neat scenes. Sophia’s pompous ecology lecture is punctured by giggling kids who, checking her up on social media, point out her credentials are somewhat tarnished given she lost her entire crew to sharks. One sensible cop doesn’t go along with the usual sacrificial nonsense as his colleagues put themselves in harm’s way because his family means more to him than a shark.
This should have been Netflix going DTV. Instead, it’s Netflix showing Hollywood where to go.
Unmissable. You gotta see this.
Author: Brian Hannan
I am a published author of books about film - over a dozen to my name, the latest being "When Women Ruled Hollywood." As the title of the blog suggests, this is a site devoted to movies of the 1960s but since I go to the movies twice a week - an old-fashioned double-bill of my own choosing - I might occasionally slip in a review of a contemporary picture.View all posts by Brian Hannan