2024, Xavier Gens (The Divide) -- Netflix
And yet, I say, "This was an awesome movie." If you like the venn diagram of monster (shark) and disaster (shark attack in an unexpected area) movies, that is. If you prefer your movies to have logical conclusions based on science and fact, this is not for you.
No no no, you get me wrong. It was not in the utterly ludicrous vein of Sharknado, but, stick with me, I have a point -- if Asylum is better known for doing unbelievably bad mockbusters, oft picked up by my brother in the VHS store near our childhood home, but also did these outrageously weird & bad monster/disaster/mashup movies, then its conceivable someone would do a "better movie" (debatable) in the same ilk of those outrageous ones. This was a well-done movie, and I have seen a handful of Gens previous works; he knows how to construct a proper movie. But it was not a good movie.
Shark Researcher Sophia Assalas (Bérénice Bejo, Final Cut) and her team, including her husband, are following the shark they tagged & named Lilith to the great Pacific garbage patch -- which is real, but is not the thing of pop culture depictions, i.e. its not an island of discarded plastic. In fact, they say it would be hard to notice if you drove a boat through it, but as a concentration of plastic in an area, its still a horrible thing. Anywayz, pop culture depiction intact, the divers are under it when Lilith arrives. She's not a happy shark, and she betrays all the behavioural science these researchers know, and eats them all. Except Sophia who is on the boat.
Years later, Paris. Traumatized Assalas works at an aquarium and is approached by an eco-activist Mika (Léa Léviant, Mortel) who says she has tracked the shark Lilith to Paris. The tag is still active. She and her group want to find Lilith and guide her back to the ocean before others find and kill her. Too late!! She eats some homeless men who live on an island in the Seine, but not their puppy. Time for the river police to do something about this evil shark!
The problem is that the mayor of Paris has a world acclaimed triathlon event going on. She has sunk millions into cleaning up the horribly polluted river, and the eyes of the world are on her city. She's not going to let the idea of one silly shark swimming around in Paris kibosh her event. She sends her river police to find and kill the shark. But quietly.
Of note, this idea of swimming in the Seine is one ripped from the 2024 Olympics news. No sharks though. That we know of.
They track the shark to the flooded catacombs parallel to the Seine. Apparently there are all sorts of deep, abandoned tunnels down there, flooded. Considering there is a lock system on the Seine, to get to Paris, and issues with flooding during high water seasons, there must be some centuries long rising of he water levels in the city kept back by delicate infrastructure? That plays a part later in the movie. But either way, flooded catacombs deep and hidden enough to hide an angry shark and her ... nursery!!
The deep water spot under the city where the shark is hiding has become the convergence point of eco-activist Mika's group. They have noise machines that will attract the shark, and then they will guide her out of the city via ... I don't know, good will? No matter, Mika gets eaten as all foolish people in natural monster movies do, and in their panic, half her fellow eco-activists fall into the water, and get eaten. Also, there seems to be more than Lilith in the water. We are no longer dealing with "the shark".
But the "a bunch of kids, and a cop, got eaten" story pisses off the mayor so she buries it, brings in the army (navy?) and tells the river police, and Assalas to bugger off. Instead they convince some demolition experts to help them, the same guys we saw taking care of some WWII ordnance found in the Seine in an earlier mostly toss away scene. Remember the idea that there are hundreds of live shells in the muds of the Seine. The combined force of river police go diving, intending on blowing up Lilith's nursery and sealing her from returning to the Seine.
It is at this point that the idea of a pregnant shark might bring up questions. So, we get a brief pause while Assalas discovers the sharks are parthenogenic, i.e. they don't need a daddy shark and a mommy shark to breed. And there are hundreds of "born pregnant" sharks already swimming around in the nursery. If they get into the Seine, and from there, The World, things could get very very bad.
The bombing does not go well. The sharks escape. The cops all get eaten, except for Assalas and cute river policeman Adil (Nassim Lyes, A Bookshop in Paris). The sharks are in the Seine! The swimmers are in the Seine! The military is in the Seine! Scream scream, munch munch, screaaaaaaam, ratta tat tat tat. Pure monster movie action, chaos and panic. "Wait, don't use heavy weaponry, it might trigger the old ord....."
BOOM.
All the old WWII shells explode in tandem, destroying all those beautiful bridges over the Seine, including that one with all the love locks, and .... somehow causes the city to flood? While I did mention locks and seasonal flooding, I am still not sure where all that water came from to flood the city, but it all seems an excuse to show one cool scene where the Paris Métro stop is flooded, with sharks swimming around. I think that was a meme?
But but BUT that is not the big thing about the movie. The movie ends with everything having gone wrong, and gone even worse, but also with closing credits showing the spread of these sharks, that reproduce really really fast and are not bothered by the pesky fresh water of inner continental water systems. Basically they reach any water system that is connected to an ocean.
Welcome to Shark World.
I so loved this movie. The acting and pacing and all the elements of movie making were all rather solid considering that completely bonkers plot. I would so love to see two sequels, done in the style of The Strain, where the first movie is the creation of the problem, the second movie is the world trying to deal with the problem, and failing, and the final movie being ages later, post-apocalyptic, a sort of Water World but with sharks filling the oceans.
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