Seoul goes underwater in Netflix’s latest Korean original film The Great Flood

SEOUL – Netflix has been steadily muscling its way into the Korean film business, using its deep pockets to bankroll productions that skip theatres altogether.

As multiplexes continue to haemorrhage audiences – ticket sales for domestic films remain at roughly 60 per cent of 2024’s figures – the streaming giant is only doubling down.

Its slate of Korean-language originals in 2025 has spanned supernatural thrillers (Revelations) to frothy high-school romance (Love Untangled). That eclectic spread now culminates in The Great Flood, a full-throttle apocalyptic spectacle packed with mega-tsunamis, crumbling high-rises and the sort of disaster imagery that would have filled multiplexes in another era.

“It’s a genre film,” said director Kim Byung-woo, 45, at the Dec 16 press conference at CGV Yongsan in Seoul. “Disaster and science fiction, woven together. Both genres have their own pleasures, and I hope viewers get the full range.”

He added that he hoped viewers will remember the film as “something wondrous and lovely”.

Kim, as it happens, is no stranger to high-concept mayhem. His first major feature, The Terror Live (2013), turned a live broadcast into a ticking bomb; Take Point (2018) trapped mercenaries in a bunker amid a brewing world war.

His latest, the fantasy epic Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy, arrived earlier in 2025 on a wave of hype only to bomb big time, undone by half-baked world-building and maudlin melodrama.

Premiering on Dec 19, The Great Flood opens on An-na (Kim Da-mi), an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and single mother waking to a flooded Seoul. As water swallows her apartment building floor by floor, a security officer named Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo) arrives to evacuate her to a rooftop helicopter.

What she learns en route – that an asteroid impact has melted Antarctic ice caps, that civilisation is ending, that she holds the key to humanity’s survival – sets the film hurtling in directions the trailer only hints at.

Kim Da-mi has built her reputation on high-wire intensity that belies her baby face – with her feral debut in The Witch (2018), and as the sharp-tongued heroine of K-drama sensation Itaewon Class (2020).

Here, she takes on something more intimate and fraught – motherhood.

“It was the hardest part of saying yes,” the 30-year-old said. “I kept asking myself, can I actually feel this? I’m not a mother. Do I have any right to portray it?”

She credited her eight-year-old co-star Kwon Eun-seong, who plays her on-screen son, with keeping her grounded. “Eun-seong just made me believe it. He carried things I couldn’t articulate,” she said.

“Motherhood feels too enormous to capture. I just kept coming back to this idea: loving someone more than yourself. That’s what I held on to.”

Park, 44, has become something of a Netflix fixture in recent years since his Squid Game (2021 to 2015) breakout. In 2025 alone, he has already starred in the streamer’s Good News and The Price Of Confession.

He recalled his first encounter with The Great Flood script as something closer to cryptography than cinema.

“It didn’t read like a normal screenplay. Scene numbers, cryptic notations – I thought I was decoding something,” he said.

Yet something kept him turning the pages. “There was this lingering unease, this weight that stayed with me. I couldn’t shake it. When a script does that, you pay attention.”

Meanwhile, Eun-seong won over the room without trying. He has already worked with Kim – the insect-controlling hero in Omniscient Reader – so this marked a reunion. When the moderator asked why he had wanted the role, the boy put it simply: “I love water and swimming. When I saw the audition had swimming in it, I really hoped I’d get it.”

For all its straightforward title, the film has other plans than playing it straight. Midway through, the narrative veers into science-fiction territory, with puzzle-box trickery reminiscent of Doug Liman’s Edge Of Tomorrow (2014) or Christopher Nolan at his headiest. Kim was careful not to spoil details, but acknowledged the shift might throw viewers.

“I expect people will hit a point where they’re asking, ‘What the hell is going on?’” he said. “That confusion is intentional. It mirrors what An-na’s experiencing. Her questions don’t get answered quickly, and neither do yours.”

Kim conceded some might find all this convoluted, frustrating even. But he went on to make his case. “If you hold on to that uncertainty, the back half becomes more rewarding.”

He added: “This film encapsulates something I’ve been grappling with for years: What is love, and where does it come from? If you keep that in mind while watching, I think you’ll feel what we were trying to say.” THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK