Netflix viewers race to watch ‘maddening’ dystopian movie despite shocking reviews

A South Korean sci-fi disaster film has soared up the charts since dropping on Netflix last week.

Although the streaming service had been releasing a string of festive flicks throughout the month in the lead-up to Christmas, The Great Flood offered viewers something decidedly less jolly.

Starring Kim Da-mi as Dr. Gu An-na, the story 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 herself and her son.

As 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 (Kim), a researcher and single mother, is only thinking of her young son, Za-in (Kwon). As they brave the chaos, An-na realizes quickly there’s just one place to go as water floods in through the windows of her third-story apartment: up.

‘An-na fights past panicked neighbors, fends off looters, and more — only to be separated from her son. When she’s rescued by the curt and mysterious Hee-jo (Park), the two set off to find her son. But An-na soon realizes 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.

‘The Great Flood starts out as a very compelling disaster movie, but it almost becomes a disaster of a movie on the back of its own confounding ambition,’ Ready Steady Cut wrote in its review.

‘It soon stops being a disaster film and veers off into madly ambitious yet maddeningly asinine speculative sci-fi,’ Screen Anarchy declared.

‘The Great Flood is clearly trying to upend traditional disaster-movie narratives – a little too hard,’ Decider added.

These sentiments were backed by viewers; some of whom said it became ‘totally unwatchable’.

‘The Great Flood is more of a cinematic disaster than the flood itself. Unless you need to punish yourself don’t bother watching,’ Dave posted on Rotten Tomatoes.

‘If you thought you were here to see an epic flood survival movie; disappointingly, this movie isn’t at all. It seemed like it at first but somewhere along the line the movie became an unexpected sci-fi fever dream I desperately wished to wake up from,’ Wari shared.

‘Terrible. This is not a disaster movie. It attempts to be a sci-fi but has no plot you can even come close to following,’ Casey added.

Despite the mixed reactions, this hasn’t stopped Netflix subscribers tuning in, with the movie currently being the seventh most-watched film in the UK.

In an interview with The Chosun Daily, the film’s director Kim Byung-woo revealed the meaning behind the story.

‘In the film, there’s a line: “Humans must create emotions”, and emotions are what form human relationships,’ he said.

‘In my view, one of the strongest emotions humans possess is the bond between parent and child. I’ve never mentioned the word “maternal instinct” in meetings, though some might interpret it as a film about motherhood. But that would flatten the film.

‘Ultimately, this is a story about the human heart, and the relationship between a mother and child is where that can be best expressed.’

The Great Flood is streaming on Netflix.

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