Gerard Butler must be pissed. Years of making trashy fun disaster flicks like Greenland, Netflix never once considered bringing him in to be a part of The Great Flood. I pray he doesn’t watch this gem, cause if he does, he’s gonna promptly fire his agent, and sign a lifetime Netflix deal to only make Great Flood sequels for the next twenty years.
Seems like normal day for Gu An-na (Kim Da-mi) and her son Ja-in (Kwon Eun-seong) on the third floor in her high-rise apartment in South Korea. But then water starts seeping through her windows, and all hell breaks loose. It then becomes a mad rush to the top floor of the high rise, where Son Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo) and other military personnel are ready with helicopters to extract survivors to safety.
Director Kim Byung-woo has a blast playing with disaster movie tropes inside his big high rise set. Water water goes everywhere, not a drop to spare. The slow rise acts as the long term tension builder; it’s An-na’s metronome to keep moving. When things seem stable, here come the waves, the chaos agents that reset the table by plunging in and out of various apartments, to shock the audience into really paying attention again. Enter Hee-jo, coming from the higher floors, ready to battle his way down and back up again, diving into the waters from above. And when we need to catch our breath, we end up holding it underwater, panicked about when An-na or Ja-in will ever come up for water again.
But as we ascend the floors, I thought this movie would be a simple 88 minuter. But that’s not what happens here. What happens vaults The Great Flood into legendary trashy B movie status. It’s a left turn so crazy, it takes 10-15 minutes to recover from it, your head reeling. The movie then transitions into something else altogether, deadly serious which makes it even more stupidly silly as we go along. Kim Byung-woo thinks he’s making the next great Netflix epic, not realizing he is…just closer to a Tommy Wiseau than a James Cameron. The ending reaches his full potential: it’s a grand CGI fest that does look fascinating…but in service of something so preposterous you’ll find yourself giggling at everyone’s commitment to the bit.
Gerard, 2025 was your warning light to get to South Korea ASAP. Between Bullet Train Explosion and The Great Flood, we could be witnessing the turning of the tide in the disaster movie. Oh, I can propose an alternative too: Norway’s got their own Troll disasters too, that’s probably closer to Greenland!
PS: I put the trailer down here, but honestly, just go in blind if you’re interested, it’s much more fun!