Gamgi (2013) Online

I have always enjoyed Asian movies, and Korea really do manage to release some really impressive titles from time to time. I hadn't really expected anything in particular from "The Flu" ("Gamgi"), and I was blown away by the intensity and gripping storyline that director Sung-su Kim managed to present here.

Where as "Outbreak" from 1995 was great and the more recent "Contagion" from 2011 failed to impress, then "The Flu" steps right up here and proves that Korea can be a force to be reckoned with in terms of pandemic and epidemic outbreak movies. And in my honest opinion, then "The Flu" surpassed "Outbreak" by far and turned out to be a much more enjoyable movie altogether.

The story starts off in Hong Kong where a group of people are illegally transported to Korea hidden in a container. Amidst the hopeful illegal immigrants is a sick individual. Upon arrival in Korea and when the container is opened, a ghastly discovery is made as the people inside are all dead. A new and high contagious and deadly virus manages to spread like a wildfire quickly bringing a whole city to its knees, forcing the Korean government to isolate and quarantine the population. Unable to find a cure to this deadly illness, time is running out and tensions within the quarantine zone are running high.

Actually there are many more layers to the storyline, but that is as an overall whole the outline of the main storyline. This is not only a movie about a pandemic outbreak, but also about the crisis of such an outbreak on governmental level, citizen level and family level. And it works out so nicely, because the directed really is skilled at what he is doing.

The movie is running high on tension and drama, which is quite nice, and it helps the movie to keep a great pace and you get attached to the characters in the movie and want to see what happens next.

A movie is nothing without a good cast, and "The Flu" really had some nice talents on the cast list. Soo Ae (playing Kim In-hae, mother of Kim Mi-reu) really filled out her role amazingly and put on a rather impressive performance. And right up there alongside her was Hyuk Jang (playing rescue worker Kang Ji-koo) with an equally convincing performance. And they had really great on-screen chemistry. However, I was especially impressed with young Min-ah Park's (playing Kim Mi-reu) performance, for a child actress, then she was amazing in her role.

There is a sense of grand scale on the movie, as you do buy into the seriousness of this outbreak that brings an entire city to its knees and threatens to sweep out to the rest of Korea. And there are many outdoors scenes in the city that really help add to this. And I will say that the camera-work and cinematography in "The Flu" was right on all throughout the movie.

"The Flu" is the type of movie that you have to watch, regardless of whether or not you like Korean movies or movies of this particular genre. It is altogether a great and high entertaining movie.

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.

Proving once again that other countries can easily match Hollywood, or outdo them, The Flu is a great little (well actually quite big) flick that starts off as some light- hearted caper and develops into a blockbuster. I enjoyed every minute of it. This year brings the Raid 2 movie and what will Hollywood be able to match that with? Not much I suspect. Really, if people only knew what lay behind those subtitled releases (that so many refuse to watch) they'd discover more fantastic cinema than they could ever handle. Yes, The Flu is actually quite heavy on the Americanized style, but maybe this is good, as it would be a great flick to start getting into foreign cinema for the uninitiated. There's a bit of the soundtrack too that sounded very like it was taken from 28 weeks later haha. But this one shouldn't be missed. And watch until the end for the shots after the credits have rolled.

A deadly flu, is about people. Persons become exposed, some contract it and all react differently to it. An influx of illegal immigrants in a Korean city, opens Pandora's box and unleashes a virus in town.

As is common, bureaucracy gets in the way and safeguarding is delayed. There is plenty of tension and drama without the Hollywood tendency for sensationalism.

At the heart of the story is a female doctor, her daughter and a member of the fire brigade. When the outbreak is out of control it is clear that no one is safe.

The central theme of the story is the dual battle of the female doctor; the struggle to develop an antibody and keep her daughter safe. As it is always with people, choices and preferences often override any moral considerations. Right and wrong in a deadly situation become very blurred.

The movie is very effective in displaying the tragedy of uncontrolled death and the powerfulness as well as folly of being human. Courage, helpfulness, mindlessness, bureaucracy.

Perhaps the lady doctor's efforts might form the main body of this movie, although the gravity is carried in her adorable daughter's tiny shoulders. Her forcefulness and vulnerability will take the audience to a mighty emotional journey.

I have to say from the beginning that The Flu is the Korean version of Contagion, that intense thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh which realistically depicted the development of an outbreak in the United States. Fortunately, The Flu isn't a simple copy, but an (unofficial) adaptation with good performances and solid direction which puts us in the middle of the action, the drama and the stretchers. In the last 5 years, we have been seeing Korean films which emulate North American formulas; for example, Sector 7 (a copy of Alien and Leviathan), The Tower (a copy of The Towering Inferno) and Tidal Wave (natural disasters). The Flu is an addition to that group, and even though it is not very memorable and it doesn't add very much to the formula, it kept me entertained focusing on a group of characters representative of the genre: the noble doctor who has a powerful personal motivation to find the cure; the altruistic hero ready to sacrifice everything for the people he has an affection for; the inefficient politicians who endlessly discuss the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of persons to save millions; in summary, all the necessary ingredients in order to reach entertaining levels of drama, tension and urban devastation. Without forgetting, obviously, a bit of political commentary relative to the difficult international position of South Korea; the fact that the most ruthless characters are North Americans mustn't be a coincidence, because they are always ready to trample the human rights for the sake of "national security". On the negative side, The Flu has some redundant scenes which lose strength with every repetition, and the ending feels too cloying. So, in conclusion, The Flu isn't a very original or memorable film, but I think it deserves a moderate recommendation because it managed to keep me interested.

Flu while being very cliché from the plot to the characters motivation is still an entertaining outbreak movie with strong acting and thrilling action scene so if you like the first haft of 28 Days Later... and wish the whole movie like that Flu is the movie for you.The little girl is very annoying but she a big part of the story so you just have to roll with it.

I'm generally a fan of Korean movies but this one is terrible. The exposition is a parade of clichés. The quirky buddies meet the feisty but sexy lady (who has a cute daughter). Then everyone in Bundang, a satellite city of Seoul, gets the flu and starts dying. Of course this is a rip-off of every Quarantine/Contagion movie you've ever seen but it's got none of the character/plot or budget to pull it off. The director is from the A.D.D. school of direction and although Jang Hyuk does good work as the fireman it's wasted. None of the actors embarrass themselves here to be fair. But there's no time for character development which is problematic as the movie has no plot instead relying on personal drama to carry the day. Sure an advanced ability to suspend disbelief is often a necessity in Korean movies but the idea that a virus could be contained in Bundang is just plain silly. About the only thing that amused me in this movie was the undercurrent of xenophobia. Of course Vietnamese workers are the source of the deadly virus (the Vietnamese provide a growing emigrant workforce as well as mail order brides in Korea) and the scene where the "good" Korean President threatens to shoot down the "bad" American jet bombers (ordered to bomb a mob threatening to break the quarantine cordon)doesn't say much for a generation that prefer to ignore how the Korean War was won. In a country where few will have seen Contagion and xenophobia is considered a virtue it's hardly surprising this movie has found popularity but for a foreign audience this movie is best avoided.

Flu is a great movie, at the first part you won't even know where the film will lead you, it still like a common Korean drama where there are some Korean drama's joke, a man like a woman but she is already married, etc. but after a few scene, the atmosphere changed 180 degrees, from drama changed dramatically into action movie. I really love the way it twist our emotion. But even it became an action movie doesn't mean there will be no drama at all, what i love from Korean movie is the audience's emotion are being played by its drama. Ji-Koo the main actor show us how tough he is in chasing a girl he likes, which is in-hye, from the beginning until the end. Every thing he did always be the opposite of what In-hye want and it become sweet when he can be so stubborn to help In-hye and her children. Through all of the scene, honestly i can't predict how the story will end, but after the end i really disappointed about how the film end, is still want some drama actually. I almost forgot about the president character in the film, even he was not the main character but his role was really amazing, the actor played the part really great, and the president in the movie became really charismatic. So I love the drama and i love the action. Worth to watch!!

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.

Honestly, The Best Korean Sci-fi Action/Drama movie ever.. in fact, it's the best Pandemic-kind of movie around.

i thought it will be just a standard pandemic-kind of movie, like what several Europe countries production has made, but it all changed when the virus starts to spread around the city, it was so intense... but the most important thing this movie has achieved is that they successfully bound you emotionally to the characters from the beginning, so even in the most tense scenes, you will still watch not only with excitement, but with passion too, wanting to know more about what happened to every one. What will the government do?, what have become of them?, what is their fate?..

The action was intense, while the drama was so touching and bonding us with it.. in my opinion,this is even better than World War-Z, totally worth the 120+- minutes!

Flu is a good movie or actually you can say great movie created by the Korean.I am not a native speaker; I even don't know Korean language at all. I watched whole movie with subtitle ON to understand it but though I am not a native speaker so I can't say much about acting of the actors. Actually if you saying about the acting I actually like the work done by the little girl in this movie, she had done a great work and others actors acting I don't like it that much it is so-so performance on the movie. Other than acting I would say everything is great story is good, direction is good. Story of the movie start with car accident where actress of the stuck and hero of the film save after that the main movie start when container full of people are transported from the Indonesia and container come with dead people those people are dead because of flu except one guy who spread the flu and flu start spreading all over the city and after that they show on the movie how they stop the flu. In end of the movie little dramatic or no need of those scene actually which makes the movie kind of boring rather than that whole movie is awesome

I must be out of touch with reality but I have to ask, why is the South Korean President portrayed as a supplicating B!%ch in this movie?!?!

The movie has a double standard which says: "If the Koreans dealt with the situation on their own they would do so in a much more humane manner than they are forced to by external pressure from the USA". They blame the inhumanity on "forces beyond their control" until some become courageous enough to stand up to the Imperial power. WHAT?

We have here a standard tale of infection and quarantine, rendered quite nicely and realistically from the perspective of the South Korean people. We get a great snap shot of South Korean society experiencing the dreaded infection crisis.

All of a sudden the Americans are in charge!!! WHY? AND, they are portrayed as the heartless, evil "managers" of the situation. The Koreans seemingly have plans to contain the outbreak when all of a sudden BOOM! USA wants to smack down the whole effort and kill anyone that disagrees "for the sake of the entire world" or my favorite "the whole world is watching you Korea".

I thought this was a well done representation of a disease crisis outbreak. I am a big fan of the Zombie and Post-Apocalyptic Genres. However, I was insulted by this simpering deferment that represented the South Korean people as beholden to the will of the US military. Is this really how S.Koreans see themselves in the event of a catastrophe? That the US/UN is going to swoop in and call the shots because of their inadequacies? The feel of the movie suggests that this attitude of officials like the S.Korean President is somehow acceptable. If I was Korean I would be insulted by such obvious and blatant social conditioning and/or stereotyping.

As a movie about human beings dealing with crisis, particularly where it focuses on the main characters, is engaging. Hyuk Jang and Soo Ae, along with Min-ah Park are all EXCELLENT. I love the story of them getting to know and love one another to the point of dying for each other. Their relationship makes it all worth while.

The nonsense spewed from the officials like the Mayor, President and US overseer is simply outrages. It shows either a complete departure from reality OR is in some way an acceptable "realistic" portrayal that S.Korean audiences would find believable/realistic, and that makes me sad.

Also, the subtitles sucked in the version I watched but the fact that I made it through the whole thing speaks volumes about the good parts of the movie as a whole. Maybe if I spoke Korean I wouldn't be as harsh on the officials. For all I know they were telling the USA guy to eat a dick the whole movie and it just got mis-translated.

I thought this may be a movie about an apocalypse but it's just a movie about demonizing human beings who are less fortunate than the citizens of south Korea. This movie perpetuates the "fear of foreigners" and, considering the source of the film, has the audience highly skeptical about our neighbors. Not only does it play upon the fear of illness and death of our mortality, but it blatantly places blame on the immigrants, and it also does injustice to any form of compassion or morality for our fellow human beings. The warning here is: foreigners are bad, they'll kill our families, our children, those foreigners are devils and death!" If you're the kind of person that hates foreigners and want to find excuses to hate them, then this is the movie for you! They should re-title this movie "Why North Koreans have closed their borders!"

This film is amazing the little girl will bring tears too your eyes she i adorable Korea i love you. im an American but after watching this film i want to live there this film aired out just how easily our country would just wipe us out and that is exactly what Americans do and i hate that about this country. this film should open some eyes witch is needed thank you Korea for this amazing film im still crying and stick around after the credits you won't be disappointed and for the reviewer who complained about how this film makes people hate Koreans you are wrong this film made me fall in love with Korea and the people there i read your review and i was shocked at your response and for you saying that it's mellow dramatic you have no heart what so ever all the emotion in this film was needed you just wanted to find some reason to complain about something

I know some people who simply will not watched a movie with subtitles. Personally I barely notice them as I've one of those Star Trek implants, well maybe I don't however I can get very engrossed in a movie with subtitles and Flu managed that. This is very much a Korean version of Outbreak or Contagion, it has some stereotypical Korean characteristics, humour, drama, the textbook Asian emotive expressions - there's always some guy in a suit with a straight face raising his deep voice in a very controller manner to show he is serious - and honourable. Anyway I digress despite having a few ludicrous plot turns the Flu is a Korean epic executed with such great gusto, and done quite well, that you can't help but be pulled into it's South Korean Independence Day minus the aliens feel. It's popcorn all the way and the show is completely stolen by an actress who's not even listed here who played 4 year old Mirre; you're a stone cold killer if you have dry eyes at a certain point. Pleasant surprise epic disaster type movie.

"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.

Oh, wow, this was awesome! The Korean answer to 'Outbreak', but so much better without being melodramatic or predictable. The film so well depicts the ignorance of politicians and humanity's incapability of uniting and remaining calm during disasters. This was realistic, shocking and disturbing, and gets increasingly more intense as the film progresses. I did find the convenience element a bit overwhelming, especially with Hyuk Jang and Soo Ae's characters always ending up together despite the circumstances. Still, this was a really good disaster film, and so very possible.

A highly contagious and deadly virus spreads in one of Seoul's suburbs, and the army is forced to intervene by setting up a quarantine to prevent its spread. The film starts well, but the second part has several questionably unrealistic situations, diminishing its overall quality. The performances are very good, namely the performance of the cute little girl of only 5 or 6 years old delivering the most emotional and powerful scene in the movie. A film with the same subject of "Outbreak" and "Contagion" but located in South Korea.

This was amazing. The first few minutes of the film, prior to outbreak, were a bit hokey and off putting. However, once the outbreak began it was non-stop edge of your seat drama and action. The last 30 minutes / final arc of the film was the most dramatic close to a film I have ever seen; the whole time you will be holding your breath or nail biting just praying things would go a certain way. The main three characters played their roles to perfection, especially the lead male and the little girl. The antagonists were also very well done as well. There were many shocking elements that you won't see coming, and the production value of the film was very good. 9/10 stars, a must watch.

I was down with a bad cough on the day I watched this film. Throughout the show, I did not dare to even cough, swallowing back any itch I had. There's a tendency for movie-goers to feel dodgy and suspicious of anyone who is coughing or sneezing around you after the film.

The name of the movie speaks for itself, airborne virus, 3.4 infections per second, 100% fatality. A film with many different stories, showing people's desperation, hope, violence, love, vengeance, and camaraderie. The actors were fantastic, there were comedy amongst the anxiety. The fly in the ointment was the poor visual effects of the explosion scene. It was so bad that I couldn't help shaking my head at the sight of the fake fire.

Here's a few points why you should/should not watch The Flu: The Epidemic Hero Don't you think he looked more like a soldier out of war than a rescue worker out of a plague? His obsession with the female lead was a little foolish, but I guess that made the tensed film a little sweeter. I thought the character Ji-goo was a little to be to be true, risking his own life to keep a stranger's ill kid safe and helping the locked up shoppers in a shopping mall when there is an airborne virus spreading. Is that even possible in real life?

The Doctor and The Mum The character In-hye was perhaps the next most conflicting role besides the President. She's an immunologist who helped to develop the vaccine for the avian flu but when her daughter was infected by the virus too, she tried to hide the fact and smuggle her into the non-infected zone.

The doe-eye angel Get ready to be shocked by the girl. I thought the role of Mirre was just to be infected and play "sick". But her act at the climax brought tears to everyone's eyes, whether you want it or not. Yes, including guys, with testimony from my male friend, who was touched at several moments in the film. I won't give too many spoilers, but she's definitely Korea's next Moon Geun-young.

The review continues at: http://tiffanyyong.com/2013/10/02/the-flu- korean-movie-review/

First i have to say this movie was perfect .amazing outbreak movie with amazing cast and amazing director.the story was amazing too it includes Love and courage at the same time.and i have to say that Hyuk Jang and Soo Ae are amazing couple in the movie and even the child Min-ah Park is an astonishing actress.the movie talks about a guy that would do everything for the girl he love.and the director Sung-su Kim made his own perfect movie.this movie is a must watch and it should get a wide release in cinemas.i gave this movie 10/10 it truly deserve it.so thank you Sung-su Kim for making this superb amazing movie.People do you're self a favor don't miss this movie and watch it.The Flu

Koreans, our brethren in intelligence. I am proud of you and admire. South Korea occupies the 1st place on the level of intelligence in the world. Then it means something. Ukrainians - 2nd place, immediately after them, after the Koreans.

What are the same they are good fellows, those Koreans who have made such a gorgeous, good movie. Although the film is about the epidemic and infected, and the theme supposedly is not new, but the story itself is just amazing. Very well thought-out storyline, and the same scenario. The camera work is beautiful, posing above all praise.

The film raises a lot of emotions, how sad and joyful. The idea of a reunion with the little girl and two adults is not new, but in this work is very pleased, very correctly presenting as from a psychological point of view and from in terms of cinematography. Recently Koreans began making movies at the highest level, is not without drawbacks. But for the last period the South Korean cinema often shows itself in a more favorable light than Hollywood.

I advise you to see this creation, if anyone has ever seen. Very emotional, especially in bright places, this work will bring you a lot of impressions. This movie - well worth viewing. 2 hours passed and having fun while watching. I have nothing more to add, how to say, that it is very good and great work ...

Disease grips a country, panic breaking out, someone has to save their loved ones. How they always go, nothing new.

It is still pretty good, I never get enough from disaster movies so it is right up my alley. Looking for something different, this is not it. It hits every cliché in the book and does not leave the beaten path for a minute.

Another thing extremely irritating is the "cute" little song singing wise cracking girl, which is actually a spoiled brat. There is absolutely no use for this kid in the plot except to up the awww factor.

When beginning to watch Flu, you wouldn't be blamed for initially suspecting you had inadvertently stumbled upon a romantic comedy by mistake. After experiencing a car accident, scientist Kim In-Hae (the ravishing Soo-Ae) requires immediate rescue by firefighter Kang Ji-Koo (Jang Hyuk), who finds himself instantly entranced by her appearance, though her lacking charm and frequent criticism initially confronts him. Wanting to gain her favor, Ji-Koo risks his job to salvage files that were lost during her collision, and in so doing, finds himself later meeting In-Hae's daughter, Park Min-Ha (the adorable Kim Mi-Reu), who, although sweet, sports her mother's values and trust issues, which are scaffolded overtime with an explanation about Min-Ha's father.

When an unidentifiable contagion is released from a container carrying smuggled refugees, the rapid spread of the infection quickly consumes Bundang, as a reluctant government scrambles to contain the outbreak. In-Hae, because of her background, is one of several personnel called to assist in finding a cure, but when the safety of her daughter, who she's left home alone, is jeopardized because of the escalating situation, she is forced to choose between her work, and her duties as a mother. Having faith in Ji-Koo's abilities, Min-Ha calls him to help her during her time of need, Ji-Joo's attraction to In-Hae turning to dedication, as he goes out of his way to help her and her daughter, a task made difficult by the many disappearing acts Min-Ha orchestrates, due to a repetitive script.

Although In-Hae could occasionally be referred to as selfish, prioritizing her daughter over her occupational duties, Ji-Koo on the other hand could almost be described as delusional. The world around him is slowly going to hell, and instead of caring only for those closest to him, he professionally feels responsible for the lives of everyone, a sub-plot that sometimes appears to be used to keep him separated from the ladies he has come to appreciate. Though helping complete strangers is bravely unselfish, Ji-Koo appears unable to realize that without a cure, these people are beyond his capacity to assist, his decision to put his own life in danger, also jeopardizing those he loves in the process.

Though the effects used throughout are not Hollywood standard, they easily grasp your attention, and effectively convey the catastrophic nature of what's happening. What Flu does exceptionally well is build tension, the contamination of patient zero slowly leading to a major infection, the film visually detailing how easily the virus is transmitted. Moreover, as each situation reaches a climax, or begins to appear on the verge of solving, another issue emerges that further intensifies the atmosphere, ensuring the audience is always entrenched in the devolving emergency.

Furthermore, what sets Flu apart from other disaster films, is its determination to show how horribly self-centered and ruthlessly unemotional humans can be when it comes to self-preservation, and though the film isn't terribly violent, despite there being several scenes with blood, the feature will certainly shock and disturb some viewers with the in-your-face brutality, and unethically inhumane practices bestowed upon the populace, the gradual rise in panic leading to anger and insanity, by both the infected, and those trying to contain the outbreak. In traditional U.S movies moreover, Americans are portrayed as the world police force, who are continuously in the right, and it is interestingly thought-provoking to witness an interpretation from an alternate perspective, that depicts their forceful actions to be, although potentially beneficial, selfish and inhumane. The beginning of the feature conveys to the audience how the film is not based on actual events, a statement potentially provided in regards to not only the content, but the view that foreigners are a threatening force, though at the same time, the film has no issues with equally interpreting South Korean governmental officials as being just as barbaric.

Though the pandemic is well developed, some of the side characters are not, with cast members including Cha In-Pyo as the President, and Ma Dong-Seok as a corrupt emergency worker, deserving larger roles to accentuate the importance they played in the narrative. Lastly, Flu could occasionally be accused of going overboard in its depiction of events, however, this being said, the melodramatic atmosphere established during the film, unlike features including Haeundae, remains at an acceptably believable level. Flu is certainly worth viewing for a number of particularly well executed and interestingly entertaining moments, though don't expect every minute of the film to retain this level of enjoyment.

First of all, it's a good movie. It hits all the usual K-Horror tropes with actors who can act. On top of that, it possess that rare gem, a child actor who isn't annoying! She's funny and adorable and believable and I enjoyed her scenes.

So far, so good.

Then the flu hits epidemic proportions and things go to hell. Think "The Last Man on Earth" with better CGI, and government officials as weaselly and amoral as the officials in "Torchwood: Children of Earth."

Then the evil genius put his/her finger on the mom-button and left it there. If I had ANY idea of the mom-button pushing for the last half of this, I would not have watched it.

For those with no mom-buttons to push, I recommend this movie. It's terrifically frightening in a "this could happen tomorrow in real life" sense. High production values. Good acting. Good FX. Quality all around. Just beware before you press Play.