Netflix's biggest movie of the year has been revealed

Netflix has scored its biggest movie of the year from an unexpected place: the river Seine.

OK, so we already knew Netflix shark horror flick Under Paris was a hit. But the latest Netflix figures show it’s a truly notable success.

We Netflix subscribers spent a whopping 70.9 million hours watching the movie in its first week on release. It’s the biggest foreign language hit since the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front, released in 2022.

Even if we remove the foreign language bit, Under Paris is the biggest Netflix movie since Leave the World Behind, released in December 2023. 2024's Damsel only managed to outgun it in its second week on stream, which could potentially see even bigger numbers for Under Paris too.

That’s right, it’s the biggest movie of the year so far, the biggest foreign language hit since 2022.

Under Paris is the kind of relatively low budget horror movie we might expect from powerhouse Blumhouse, but it is a Netflix-distributed flick, produced by Let Me Be. According to IMDb, the film was made with a modest 25 million Euro budget.

What's it about? A shark with mutations caused by climate change is hunting in the river Seine, which winds its way through the centre of Paris.

A triathlon is about to kick off, and it’s up to Sophia (played by Bérénice Bejo) to avert a bloomin’ bloodbath.

As you might guess, this one features a good amount of gore so she’s not entirely successful.

Under Paris is also the rare horror flick to achieve a mostly positive Rotten Tomatoes score, at 65% fresh.

However, apparently the viewing public is less keen than the critics for once. Under Paris currently has a 35% viewer score on the site.

“This is literally the worst movie I have ever seen. And I've seen many,” says one anonymous reviewer.

“This is by far the worst shark movie ever created. Story line is pointless and idiotic,” says Ben A.

Why are we highlighting the junk reviews? Well, we’ve been bigging up Under Paris since it came out. But you’ll probably enjoy it more if you enter with sensible expectations, not anticipating the most important movie of the year.

It’s a fun B-movie shlock-fest, just with better production values than we usually see in these sorts of flicks.

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