The Great Flood review (2025)

The Great Flood is likely going to prove a divisive film. Some viewers are going to love the fact that the film isn’t exactly what’s teased in the trailer while others will bemoan the twist and drastic tonal shift. 

For the former, The Great Flood will prove to be a fun, surprising viewing experience with some unexpected shifts and twists that will actually be hard to see coming. Other viewers might eventually get frustrated with a bait and switch natural disaster film that isn’t so clear cut.

An Na (Kim Da-mi) is awakened by her five-year-old, Ja In (Kwon Eun-sung), an energetic and slightly rambunctious child eager to continue working on his swimming. The groggy An Na doesn’t quite pick up on what Ja In is saying when he mentions the big swimming pool outside. When she notices water seeping into her third-floor apartment, she realizes the driving rain outside is more than just a case of inclement weather.

While being on the third floor has its advantages when leaving the apartment complex, it makes ascending to higher floors far more difficult especially when the other tenants start making a beeline to the packed stairwells. There is a great sense of claustrophobia and taxing physical endurance as An Na carries Ja In through the crowd and narrow hallways.

Director/co-writer Byung-woo Kim and co-screenwriter Moisés Velasco parcel valuable Great Flood plot points in small doses. The approach helps create a sense of mystery although at times, the information drip is a little too methodical. Kim and Velasco do cover most of the seeming plot holes over time though a few slip through the cracks.

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Kim makes a high-rise apartment complex a precarious backdrop for a disaster thriller. Camera angles along the outside stairway and huge tsunami waves look impressively catastrophic. Underwater sequences are wonderfully shot and add more drama with the timeline crunch as characters struggle to hold their breath.

An Na is a researcher of great importance to the United Nations, who have dispatched an agent, Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo, Squid Game) to retrieve her. Hee-jo seems somewhat suspicious, thanks in no small part to Hae-soo’s performance of making him come off ambiguous. Maybe Hee-jo is legitimately here to help or maybe he’s withholding some necessary information from An Na for his own interests?

Da-mi delivers a strong performance as a mother struggling to keep it all together in an unimaginable scenario. Kim gives The Great Flood some elements of The Impossible (available now on Blu-Ray on Amazon) with a mother doing whatever she has to keep her son alive. Eun-sung is also solid playing the role of a young child spot-on including some moments that are frustrating, but realistic for a five-year-old.

There is not much of an ensemble in The Great Flood as there just a few other characters with more than a few throwaway lines of dialogue. Given the full scope of the film, adding a few more supporting characters who help An Na and Ja In along the way could have helpful and provide more side quests as the story plays out.

The Great Flood feels like one of those films that viewers who appreciate it will want to revisit it to try and catch any teases or foreshadowing they missed on their initial viewing. Some of the flashbacks featuring An Na, her husband and supervisor will likely be more insightful with a more intentional focus towards those scenes.

If there’s one area that’s shaky with The Great Flood, it’s the final act. It seems like Kim and Velasco needed to close a few more loops to answer some nagging questions. Those are the result of the tone established in the second act and how not everything is as it seems. There appears to be a fairly significant plot point that goes unresolved. Based on the setup, it almost feels like an obvious payoff was just left dangling.

The Great Flood definitely has a lot going on, which will not be for everyone. Those who are game for riding the wave will find a welcome disaster-style film that doesn’t let up until its satisfying conclusion.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Photo Credit: Netflix

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