The South Korean Sci-fi disaster film has been elevated to the charts since its release on Netflix last week.
The streaming services had released a string of festive flicks throughout the month in the lead-up to Christmas, but The Great Flood offered viewers something decidedly less jolly. Kim Da-mi as Dr Gu An-na, being the main character of the story, the plot centres on an AI researcher living in Seoul who has recently been widowed. One day, she wakes up to find floodwater taking over the thirty-floor complex, and a race for survival then sets in. With her six-year-old son Jai-in, An-na races to reach the roof as many of her neighbours get swept away and drown as huge waves come surging towards them and hit the building. However, along the way, she receives a call from a mysterious man, played by Squid Game’s Park Hae-soo, informing her that agents are on the way in a helicopter to save her and her son.
In the synopsis for the film teases: ‘When a massive tsunami threatens to wipe out the city of Seoul, citizens have nowhere to run: This natural disaster is a worldwide extinction event. However, An-na, a researcher and single mother, is only thinking of her young son, Za-in. As they brave the chaos, An-na realises quickly there’s just one place to go as water floods in through the windows of her third-story apartment: up.
‘An-na fights her panicked neighbours, fends off looters, and more, only to be separated from her son. When she’s rescued by the curt and mysterious Hee-jo, the two set off to find her son. But An-na soon realises Hee-jo’s motives for offering help may not be as altruistic as they seem and that the fates of all three of them may rest in her hands. Although viewers have regularly praised South Korean dystopian films and TV shows like Squid Game, All of Us Are Dead and Hellbound, the twist that turns the whole premise of The Great Flood on its head has left many frustrated. Ready Steady Cut wrote in its review, ‘The Great Flood starts as a very compelling disaster movie, but it almost becomes a disaster of a movie on the back of its own confounding ambition’.
Screen Anarchy declared, “It soon stops being a disaster film and veers off into madly ambitious yet maddeningly asinine speculative sci-fi”. Decider added, “The Great Flood is clearly trying to upend traditional disaster-movie narratives a little too hard. ” These sentiments were backed by viewers, some of whom said it became “totally unwatchable”.
Dave posted on Rotten Tomatoes, “The Great Flood is more of a cinematic disaster than the flood itself. Unless you need to punish yourself, don’t bother watching”.