User Reviews

The simply titled 'The Flu' bears the honour of being the sophomore South Korean disaster film to be built around a pandemic, but that probably won't be immediately apparent judging from how accomplished Kim Sung-soo's film is. Whereas such genre films tend to struggle between keeping an intimate focus on some key characters and retaining the larger expanse of the calamity, this one is staged with impressive clarity from start to finish, never once losing its grip from a tense thrilling ride.

Careful not to bite off more than he can chew, Kim confines the pandemic to Bundang, an affluent suburb of Seoul. A quick prologue establishes how a ship container of illegal immigrants from Hong Kong arrives in the city, all of whom are dead from a lethal airborne avian flu virus - save for one very sick man. No thanks to one of two handlers sent to pick up the immigrants, the virus finds its next host to take root, eventually spreading to the people at the pharmacy where he tries to get medicine - and thereafter to just about anyone and everyone with close contact to his bodily fluids.

Some quick thinking on the part of the authorities - or for that matter, Kim - means that Bundang is swiftly quarantined from the rest of the country, so that unlike its more ambitious Hollywood counterparts 'Contagion' and 'World War Z', it has no need to address just how the pandemic is affecting populations at different ends of the globe. Instead, a smaller but tighter narrative ensues, as soldiers and other Government security personnel swoop in to set up quarantine camps to separate the visibly infected from those without any signs or symptoms - and in the process get rid of the disease-ridden members of the populace.

On a national level, Kim casts a critical eye on the responses of the President and his councilmen, to whom life-and-death decisions are not just made for the greater good but also with the consideration of political mileage. Despite the obvious - and rather strained - hysterics especially towards the end, this dimension of the story is an altogether interesting angle - not least for the fact that it also illuminates the hypothetical tension which may arise between the Koreans and the Americans, the latter of whom have considerable presence in the country as part of the United States Pacific Command.

By and large though, the story is driven from the point of view of three key characters struggling to survive amid the chaos and confusion within Bundang - there's the Emergency Response Team worker Kang Ji-goo (Jang Hyuk), immunologist Kim In-hye (Su Ae) and In-hye's precocious young daughter Mi-reu (Park Min-ha). In several meet-cute moments before the epidemic becomes full blown, Ji-goo gets to rescue In-hye from a freak car accident, go beyond the call of duty to save In-hye's belongings from the scene of the accident, and play the surrogate father figure to Mi-reu.

Admittedly, Kim throws in a fair number of narrative contrivances in order for some generous melodramatic posturing. It probably won't come as any surprise that Mi-reu will get separated from In-hye early on during the melee to engender a mother-daughter reunion, or that Mi-reu will catch the virus at some point such that In-hye's quest to locate and develop the antibody isn't just a professional mission but a personal one as well. And yes, like 'World War Z', this one is all about finding the cure to end the bloodshed, which in this case lies in the lone illegal immigrant who survived the perilous journey that was responsible for bringing the virus to the city.

Yes, those who do not like their drama with a heavy dollop of theatrics will probably be cringing in their seats, simply because Kim isn't a director who deals with much subtlety. Every opportunity to tug at his audience's heartstrings or arouse their sense of indignation is played up to maximum effect, right down to the absolutely manipulative finale where Mi-reu becomes a walking placard of a plea for humanity to prevail. Despite the heavy-handedness, there is a pulsing urgency to the proceedings that grips you from the start, and we suspect casual viewers will still likely - as we were - to be swept up by the emotional intensity of the film.

It does help that Kim inserts moments of levity from time to time. Mi- reu's bonding with Ji-goo before the start of the pandemic establishes a pleasantly amusing rapport between the two, which of course is milked for sympathy later on. But there is always Ji-goo's daft male colleague for comic relief (played by veteran actor Yoo Hae-jin), who never fails to bring a smile with his desperate antics to win the attention of the ladies he assist on the job - no wonder then he gets a humorous coda at the end that sees him helping a snooty but pretty lady free her skirt caught in the door of a public bus.

This being his first film after a decade, Kim - best known for his work on the historical epic 'Musa The Warrior' - shows that his cinematic sensibilities as a director of large-scale action sequences has not dulled. In particular, the extended standoff between the remaining residents of Bundang and the military demonstrate a certain boldness in imagination and execution, on a scale rarely seen in Korean cinema. Put aside the fact that it plays too often to an Asian audience's taste for hand-wringing, Kim's virus disaster film is a grand accomplishment on many levels, especially in how it portrays the scope of the catastrophe both on a larger and much more intimate level. It is riveting stuff indeed, like a shot of pure adrenaline to the arm.

Like many people living in the time of Covid-19, I've been interested in watching films dealing with flu pandemics and the like. This is the Korean version of the story and it's as well made and thrilling as any other Korean movie you could randomly choose. After a melodramatic opening section, the film moves into decent thriller territory with all of the dedicated acting and political commentary you expect from Korean cinema. Once the action shifts to the internment camps it becomes particularly gripping, building to a climax that never lets up. Forget Soderbergh's overrated CONTAGION; FLU is the real deal.

So like many others I stumbled across this film while bitten by the outbreak movie bug. And after reading the reviews, of which many promised a great Contagion-esque disaster movie, I was real excited to watch it. I am a fan of Korean film so that added to my hopes that this was gonna be good.

Entertaining, yeah ok, at least the first half.. But meh! It is definitely not anything spectacular that you'll remember once it finishes (and I did wish for it to finish in the end - wow those 2 hours felt rather long). My biggest issue was hot female doctor who is a specialist in her field only to break every rule in the book when it comes to her daughter. Even if it is a plausible scenario it is just not convincing in this flick. The fireman and male lead is a charmer and there's a bit of banter going on, but wow, obsess much! He really puts everything at risk, including his own life again and again and again, and also more or less adopt this kid he barely knows...and keeps chasing this lady who keeps making terrible decisions from start to finish, I mean that poor surviver and patient Zero should be on top of her list to keep alive and kicking (antibodies and all that)! Surely! Isn't that what they teach doctors in outbreak school!?

The non-korean characters are slightly laughable and people claim this is what would really happen if there was such a deadly outbreak, well, not sure I agree on that one. Attempts to start mass killing the innocent and very (!) healthy citizens while the world is watching is probably not high on any commanders list. Also the coughing scenes at the start are a bit in your face. We get that this is how it spreads. You don't have to dumb it down with zoomed in contagious droplets landing on ice creams and what not.

So yeah. There's a bit of action. And a bit of political tenseness. There's the quite strange mama-daughter relationship (why is she so easily leaving her very young daughter unattended all night to later on become an irrational mess over her wellbeing?). And there is sort of like a romance thing going on, at least one way hopes from the man who just won't give up. It tries to play on heart strings and it tries to make us appalled. I think the film makers hope us to sit on the edge of our seat... But it is a little bit hit and miss. It is not bad though! It is just not that great either.

If you have two hours to spend then go for it. But this is not Outbreak. It is not Contagion. And it is definitely not anywhere near The Host.

This is the triumphant story of how one single mother was able to care more for saving her daughter than her country, or the World for that matter, despite her profession as epidemiologist. Overall a decent watch, but while the little kid is cute as hell she gets annoying way too quickly. It's basically all about the mother feeling bad for emotionally neglecting her daughter, then an outbreak happens, and she spends the rest of the movie trying to save her. At one point she even has the cure in her hand and is ready to throw away millions of lives just to find out where some medical staff took her daughter. The emotions are so simplistic and cliché it's a bit insulting to the characters that the actors are portraying. Don't expect this film to blow your mind, and if it does you maybe want to pay a little more attention to expanding your mind.

Wow, what a build up to the end movie! From the visual spread of the virus by coughing to burning people alive to military shooting of civilians, all to end with a child's plea and a guy finally gets the girl! Even with this movie dated 9 years ago, it depicts how possible this could happen with the wrong people in charge..... ..

In place of the zombies we have virus infected monsters and the evil of humanity when it comes to saving their own skin

"The Flu" starts with a group of illegal immigrants being smuggled in a container from Hong Kong to Bundang, near Seoul in South Korea. Somewhere along the journey, a mutated form of Avian Flu kills everybody in the container except for one survivor, who escapes when two brothers open the container. The virus quickly spreads all over Bundung, a city of 472,000 people.

While this is happening, a rescue worker named Ji-koo is trying to get close to a woman called In-Hae he rescued from a crashed car, despite the fact that she has an incredibly uptight and vain attitude. He later discovers she has a child, a young girl named Mirre, who is left home alone and free to wander around Bundang with strangers as she pleases, despite being barely 10.

What "The Flu" does well though, is that instead of just focusing on how the epidemic is affecting the 3 central characters, it is able to show how the epidemic is affecting the rest of the city devastatingly as well, as opposed to "World War Z" which focused too much on Brad Pitt's character for the viewer to really get a sense of the magnitude of the virus. How the governing bodies and the general populace deal with this deadly airborne virus provide some of the best scenes of the movie, as the inhumanity that people begin to exude leads to some tense and horrific events.

"The Flu" could also be very melodramatic at times, more so in the second half of the film, which I found was beginning to turn quite ridiculous towards the end, but thankfully didn't go overboard and managed to conclude fairly solidly.

An overall pretty good disaster movie, that manages to examine the effects of the virus outbreak both on a larger scale and at a more personal level very well.