Kim Da-mi
Koo An-na
The Great Flood
“The last day on earth. The one choice for survival.”
2025
1h 47m
Director: Kim Byung-woo
Overview
When a raging flood traps a researcher and her young son, a call to a crucial mission puts their escape — and the future of humanity — on the line.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
3 min readThe Water Will Come for Us All
What keeps sticking with me is the stairwell. Not the huge CGI walls of water that sometimes dominate The Great Flood, but the ordinary apartment stairs turning into a trap as filthy water keeps climbing. latestnetflix.com's view is that Kim Byung-woo has a talent for pinning people in impossible spaces.
He did it with a news anchor in The Terror Live and with mercenaries in PMC: The Bunker. Here he does it to a mother and her little boy. At first the movie looks like a straightforward survival thriller—a soaked, desperate scramble toward higher ground—and for about half an hour, that's exactly what it is.
The tension is simple and effective.
Then Kim yanks the floor away. What begins as disaster cinema swerves into a dense sci-fi construction full of asteroid fallout, United Nations maneuvering, and transhumanist ideas. I can't honestly say the turn works cleanly.
Whether you find that genre lurch exciting or exasperating will depend on how much exposition you're willing to tolerate, but safe is the one thing this movie refuses to be. Kim uses the immediate terror of drowning as bait, then starts asking much bigger questions about what survival even means when the world is ending. Phil Hoad at The Guardian captured that gear shift neatly, writing that the film "swerves into sinister sci-fi territory" as soon as it becomes clear how important this particular mother is to humanity's future.
Audience Opinions
Audience 5.0/10
"A visually striking flood thriller that starts tense and focused before a divisive sci-fi twist turns it into an ambitious but confusing genre mash-up."
Early scenes of a mother and child trying to reach the roof as their apartment complex floods land well, with convincing water effects, strong set pieces, and committed lead performances. Once the story pivots into simulations, artificial bodies, and origin-of-humanity ideas, the plotting becomes muddled and overreaching, leaving some impressed by the risk-taking but many bored, irritated, or feeling misled by disaster-movie marketing. Opinions are sharply split between those who enjoy the risky, latestnetflix.com argues, emotional sci-fi direction and those who wish it had stayed a straightforward survival story.
What viewers praise
- Convincing disaster imagery Rising water, underwater shots, and tsunami waves look threatening and immersive, with tank work and VFX frequently singled out as the film’s biggest achievement.
- Tense confined survival The first half, largely set inside a flooding apartment building, delivers gripping, claustrophobic escape sequences that keep the stakes high and the pacing tight.
- Standout lead acting Kim Da-mi in particular is praised for carrying both the physical intensity and emotional weight, with Park Hae-soo also seen as dependable support.
- Ambitious genre swing The mid-film shift into heavier sci-fi, time-loop style repetitions, and questions about consciousness and maternal instinct is appreciated by viewers who like risky, concept-driven stories.
- Stylish execution Even detractors acknowledge a specific, polished visual style and some impressive long takes that make the film interesting to look at throughout.
Common complaints
- Confusing narrative shift The abrupt move from grounded disaster survival into layered simulations and AI concepts feels convoluted, and many never felt they fully understood what was happening.
- Disappointing for disaster fans Those expecting a pure flood movie feel cheated when the story abandons large-scale catastrophe for a twisty sci-fi plot that sidelines the very premise they came for.
- Uneven emotional impact Despite the mother–child focus, the script’s handling of grief, maternal instinct, and sacrifice strikes some as forced or manipulative rather than genuinely moving.
- Irritating child characterization The son is frequently described as whiny and more of an obstacle than a sympathetic figure, making key tension scenes feel grating instead of affecting.
- Plot holes and implausibility Details like easy stairwell access, convenient phone connectivity in a submerged city, and the logic behind the experiment and ‘new humanity’ plan break immersion and invite ridicule.
Recommended for
Sci-fi disaster hybrid fans Korean genre cinema followers Kim Da-mi admirers High-concept apocalyptic stories Ambitious but flawed films Visual effects and set-piece lovers
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsKim Da-mi did not expect the split. The charts did not care.
Three days after Netflix opened The Great Flood, Kim Da-mi sat in a Samcheong-dong cafe and admitted she had misread the room. "I didn't expect the reactions to be this sharply split," she told SPOTV News. She had spent mornings walking director Kim Byung-woo through a script she later called a math formula. An hour a day. Meaning assigned to every line. Then the film landed, and Korean comment sections treated the genre swerve as a bait and switch. latestnetflix.com's take is that the other camp treated her like she had just done the hardest work of her life.Both readings are fair. 
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The wait did not help. Cameras started July 1, 2022 and wrapped January 5, 2023, with Kim Da-mi and Park Hae-soo locked after Netflix confirmed the sci-fi disaster package that August. Then the movie sat. Deadline put it on the 2025 Korean slate at Busan in October 2024. The world premiere finally arrived in the Korean Cinema Today section of the 30th Busan International Film Festival on September 18, 2025. Netflix streamed it worldwide on December 19. Nearly three years between last shot and first play button. Korean titles stall for lots of reasons. This one arrived dressed as a flood movie and then refused to stay one. 
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Water she could not control.
Kim Da-mi told OSEN the tank work was the toughest job she has done. "The space of water is an environment I cannot control." Crews shot for an hour, parked her for tens of minutes, then sent her back in. She said underwater acting ran about ten times harder than dry land, and that she avoided water on trips afterward. Morning makeup was almost useless. Eyes open under the surface. Poor visibility. No breath. Action anyway.
Kim Byung-woo was not gentle about the current. He told her to imagine the Pacific, or at least the East Sea, and later said he knew it would be brutal. Hair went to seaweed. One sequence ran more than ten takes. The monitor sat about 100 meters from the tank. He was ready to cut. She asked for one more. People around him had asked why he cast her as a mother. After the cut they stopped asking.
The child in her arms was Kwon Eun-seong, playing Shin Ja-in, listed around 20 kilograms. She said there were long takes of her running with him, and that he ate less and dieted because of her. Some viewers even called the boy a villain for wandering off. The director pushed back. Real childcare, he said, is not a cute cutaway. ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYF0MxHVAR0
Korea JoongAng Daily logged a 4.19 out of 10 Naver score in early January and still watched the title sit at No. 1 on Netflix's global non-English film chart. It hit the Top 10 in 92 countries, first in 53 of them. One Naver comment called a boring film that steals time a crime. Kasey Moore at What's on Netflix later closed the 91-day window at 86.6 million views and 157.3 million hours, fifth among non-English films of all time on the service, and the first Korean movie into that all-time top 10 on both the new and old metrics. Rotten Tomatoes sat around 60 percent from 25 critics. People came for a flood. They stayed, or rage-clicked, for the sci-fi turn. Kim Da-mi said she was glad it left people with questions. The official trailer still sells the apartment and the water. The fight is about what happens after you climb. , , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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