An-na (Kim Da-mi) is an Ai researcher for the Darwin Centre, a mysterious scientific think tank. She’s also the mother of Ja-in (Kwon Eun-seong). He’s a precocious little guy who loves swimming and she’s a busy scientist buried under her grief and the hazards of being a single mom. Life is tough but it’s fun and she’s managing. Until she gets a call from Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo), a security specialist sent by the Darwin Centre. Because something terrible is about to happen. Everywhere.

This is one of those movies you need to go into knowing as little as possible and it’s tough to write about as a result so here we go. Kim Byung-woo and Han Ji-su’s script is one of the most deceptively tidy stories I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s a weird, and often brilliant, combination of enormous blockbuster scale and intimate character drama and the two collide in some weird and surprising ways. There’s a pivotal moment about half an hour in where the sheer scale of the story becomes apparent and everyone just stops that took my breath away. There’s another not long after which is entirely silent and even more terrifying for that. Kim Byung-woo’s direction has a tremendous understanding of scale and space, with characters frequently on opposite sides of a courtyard or different levels of the building but visible. Like the script, it’s odd and witty and there are a couple of beats in here which are among some of the smartest takes on this idea I’ve ever seen.

The cast impress too and, again, do so in some surprising ways. Ja-in is a pushy, slightly annoying kid and feels way more realistic than a lot of child characters as a result. He’s also smart and perceptive and a pivotal part of major scenes. The slightly bratty swimming enthusiast we meet isn’t all he is, and Da-mi as An-na is just as good. What starts as a good naturedly shlubby, hard-pressed mom shifts twice into someone resolute, determined and heroic. She’s the hero of her story, she just doesn’t realise it for a while. Similarly, Hae-soo’s Hee-jo starts as a bog-standard action hero but becomes much more fun as the true nature of the story unfolds to us and them alike.

Verdict: That’s a lot of words without many spoilers, right? Honestly, we’re going to keep it that way. This is a very clever, very kind movie that surprised me about four times. You might guess the truth before the characters do but I promise you won’t guess how they get there. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

The Great Flood is on Netflix now.