The Great Flood

Seeing this was trending as the most watched film on Netflix on the lazy day after Christmas, I thought "Great! an old fashioned disaster flick", there's no better cinematic comfort food.

THE GREAT FLOOD is kind of a disaster, but not in a good way.

Drowning in ideas, and dragged waaaay under by one of the most annoying child characters in history, it's more sink than swim.

We meet An Na and her young son in an opening scene so grating that I immediately wanted the kid to drown. Since the flood hadn't even hit yet, that's a bad sign.

Water begins leaking into her apartment, which if I was on the 20th floor of a building, would be a major sign of concern. But she's got that annoying kid spouting horrible dialogue and whining, so maybe a gargantuan tidal wave is less of a concern.

Soon, Hee Jo, a secret service type dude in a neon blue jacket screams the opposite of clandestine arrives to try and help her and her son escape.

For the first 30 minutes or so, we're not told what generated this flood, we just see An, her son and hundreds of others trying to get up the stairs to the top of the building.

Minor behaviors seem unnatural, some characters seem flat and everything isn't quite what it seems.

If you don't want to know why, just skip to the later in the review below where it says END SPOILER ALERT.

Go ahead...I'll wait.

Okay, for those that have seen it, did you buy The Matrix angle more than I did?

The upside of realizing that the entire disaster is an AI designed test to instill humanity and continue the human race is that it opens up the story for many iterations and repeats, "Edge of Tomorrow" style. The difference in that 2014 Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt sci-fi thriller is that you cared about the characters and the challenge was ever evolving and suspenseful.

THE GREAT FLOOD simply dives you back into the deep end with the most annoying kid since Cousin Oliver on "The Brady Bunch" and Hee Jo, who serves up some decent action, but no real soul. Kim Da-Mi is the best thing in the film and her portrayal of An Na is an island of reality in the middle of the mess.

I liked some of the DePalma/ John Wick 4 style camera work as the camera pulls up above the action and you can see the AI settings and the undefined, shimmering "Matrix" style territory beyond them.

But how do you build suspense when your ultimate objective is so undefined?

END SPOILER ALERT

Are there upsides?

The special effects are pretty good, especially as giant wave after wave approaches the skyscrapers and 70 story stairwells fill with water. The space set action looks terrific as well, with crisp visuals.

Interestingly, the best characters are some of the throwaway citizens of that massive apartment building. A young couple about to see their first child born in a hallway as flood waters rise toward their floor.

An older man care taking for his invalid wife, giving her one more spoon full of food as a 200ft wave approaches outside their living room window. Those are people I connected with.

If the film had been about An Na trying to save them, I would have been all in.

But no, we have to save this kid who pretends to swim on the floor as water seeps into their high rise home, and can't stand in one place for 30 seconds, constantly putting himself in peril.

So dumb. So annoying.

THE GREAT FLOOD is indeed all wet, earning a soggy C-, saved from a lower grade by decent special effects and an interesting, if poorly executed concept.