BIFF 2025 'The Great Flood' review: Kim Da-mi can't save puzzling Netflix fantasy
Kim Da-mi as AI developer An-na and Kwon Eun-seong as her son Ja-in in a still from "The Great Flood" / Courtesy of Netflix
2/5 stars
Drowning in ambition but narratively adrift, Kim Byung-woo's latest high-concept blockbuster opens with an apartment complex being consumed by a giant tsunami before morphing into a science-fiction thriller that defies simple explanation.
Kim's filmography boasts a string of audacious genre-bending experiments, from "The Terror Live to Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy." "The Great Flood," which premiered last week at the 30th Busan International Film Festival, is an action-packed puzzle box that continues in a similar vein.
Kim Da-mi plays An-na, an AI developer and single mother who wakes to discover that Seoul is being bombarded by unprecedented rainfall and flooding, with the water level already reaching her second-floor flat.
Just as she and her six-year-old son Ja-in (Kwon Eun-seong) are being evacuated to a higher floor, a giant wave crashes into the building, sending them and their escape plan into chaos.
During its opening movement, "The Great Flood" is breathlessly tense, boasting impressive digital effects and a palpable sense of danger.
An-na and Ja-in are repeatedly separated from one another and left fighting for air as one level after another is engulfed by the relentless surge, and they must manoeuvre to safety underwater.
The arrival of security officer Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo), who has been sent by An-na's employers specifically to shepherd her and her son to safety, fuels the unfolding mystery even further.
Park Hae-soo as security officer Hee-jo in a still from "The Great Flood" Courtesy of Netflix
An-na soon learns that more than just her neighbourhood is under threat. The catastrophe is global and all humanity is in danger, with the key to survival resting explicitly in An-na's hands.
No longer content for "The Great Flood" to remain merely a disaster film, Kim Byung-woo flips the script and sends us spiralling into a labyrinthine sci-fi mystery that threatens the very fabric of An-na's perceived reality.
Rather than upping the ante, however, this is also the moment that the film breaks its banks and gushes away from its director, overflowing into total incoherence thanks to a barrage of untethered revelations that are tossed into the mix with little concern for clarity.
As the film's emotional anchor, Kim Da-mi does her damnedest to keep things on an even keel, but she must do battle with more than just the elements as the director's boundless overreach threatens to sink the project entirely.
By the time the clouds part and the waters do eventually calm, "The Great Flood" leaves its audience less in awe and more battered, bruised and utterly bewildered.
"The Great Flood" will start streaming on Netflix on December 19.
Read the article at SCMP.