Disaster fiction, far from having convinced the French press, received praise from the American writer.
Stephen King, the “master of horror” in the United States, crowned Netflix’s “turnip stuffed with shark”. Under the Seinewhich imagines a great white shark massacring swimmers and environmentalists along the river, is far from unanimous among critics.
Thursday June 13, the writer of That, of Shining and of Misery published a post on “I thought that Under the Seine would be a joke film, like Sharknado, but Twitter convinced me to watch it, and it’s really, really good. The last 25 minutes are incredible”he proclaimed on X.
Criticism and scandal
In France, a tidal wave swept over the work which features Bérénice Bejo in the role of an oceanographer mourning the death of her family, devoured by the famous shark. However, the opinions of the English-speaking press were much more laudatory than those of France. The Guardian for example, considers that Under the Seine is one of the few shark films to compare with Jaws by Steven Spielberg. Likewise, the American magazine Variety celebrated a “intelligent blockbuster”, “a shark film worthy of swimming in the wake of Sea teeth».
The disaster drama of Xavier Gens (Hitman, Budapest, Farang) also faces suspicion of plagiarism. Director Vincent Dietschy sued the streaming platform after noting “no less than 135 points of contact” between Catfishhis work, and Under the Seine. The plot of Catfishdeposited with the authors’ society (SACD) in October 2012, was revealed by The world last April. Given the success of Xavier Gens’ fiction – which would have accumulated 71 million hours viewed the week after its launch -, a sequel to Under the Seine would already be considered. “If there is a sequel, it will be in a Paris completely submerged by water. mentioned the filmmaker in an interview with Variety . In the end credits, a world map showed the shark trackers fanning out across rivers and oceans, potentially setting the stage for a saga.
