Review of Flu

Flu (2013)
7/10
Melodramatic but a solid disaster movie.
24 November 2013
Warning: Spoilers
"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.
5 out of 14 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed