The Great Flood debuts at #1 on Netflix's global Top 10 Movies Chart amid mixed reviews

On December 19, the South Korean Netflix sci-fi film, The Great Flood, was released, starring Kim Da-min and Park Hae-soo. Soon after its release, the Great Flood debuted at #1 on Netflix's global Top 10 Movies Chart, which came as a surprise to many, despite the mixed reviews that had appeared online. While many loved The Great Flood, some also expressed that the movie failed to reach the fans' expectations and stated that the plot was nothing special for the current sci-fi film scenario.

However, several viewers had put forth incredible remarks about what The Great Flood achieved and the potential it showcased for Korean sci-fi. For those who haven't watched The Great Flood yet, the movie revolves around a mother, An-na, and her son, Ja-in, who wake up in their apartment complex to witness a great flood approaching to threaten humanity. As she tries to safeguard her son and herself from the danger, things turn south, and she's forced to leave her son behind.

An-na is an AI researcher who plays a vital role in creating solutions to repopulate Earth in case of an apocalyptic scenario. Therefore, as she's taken away from Earth to continue her research at Isabale Labs, located in space, she leaves Ja-in with a promise to come back for him. However, she dies due to a meteor strike on the way to Isabela Labs, unable to fulfill her promise. Regardless, she had previously volunteered as a test subject for her own creation.

As Isabela Labs creates synthetic humans to repopulate the Earth, An-na designs an Emotion Engine to help the synthetic humans to experience emotions akin to humans. Therefore, the second part of the movie doesn't follow An-na in reality, but a synthetic mother training its Emotion Engine in a time loop. This is because AI models learns through repetition and patterns, and the pattern chosen through An-na's memories was the day she failed to keep her promise to her son.

The Great Flood's complexity and ability to bring together the importance of human connections with technology were greatly appreciated by the audience, especially with the current misuse and abuse of AI technologies. Additionally, akin to the scale and production of Korean films, The Great Flood was commended for its VFX, especially while capturing water.

Given that water's texture is difficult to capture, the production team employed a high-level “Dry for Wet” technique where the actors had to shoot the film under smoke-filled studios. In addition to the realistic portrayal of water throughout the film, viewers were also impressed with how the actors, Kim Da-mi and Park Hae-soo, effortlessly carried the film, perfectly communicating the emotional weight and mental stress of people under an apocalyptic scenario.

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Netflix's latest South Korean sci-fi film, The Great Flood's ending explained

As people anticipate the possible end of humanity, one research group among many research groups, Isabela Labs, aims to bring a solution to save humanity. Their solution was to create synthetic humans, who are currently seen after by human caretakers. Therefore, the AI researcher, An-na, is taking care of one synthetic child, Ja-in, who is also known as NewMan77.

Isabela Labs faced an issue in replicating human emotions in synthetic humans, even though they were able to replicate other aspects, such as the human mind, body, and consciousness. For this, An-na brings in two solutions. One is to create the children first and then create the mothers by linking them to the children. This way, the synthetic humans will also have caretakers after humanity's end. The second solution was to create an Emotion Engine and perfect it by attaching it to the synthetic mothers.

Therefore, following An-na's volunteering, her memories are used to test and train the AI model, Emotion Engine, and the time loop simulation is set on her last day, where she dies while also leaving her son behind. An-na goes over 21,000 iterations in the simulation, without any memory of previous time loops or from her reality. However, the simulation begins to form holes since there was no time limit set for the number of iterations An-na has to go through.

The lack of definition allows An-na to retain memories from other time loops and also remember the reality, through which she realizes it's a simulation, and she can escape once she finds her son. Following the same, she successfully finds her son, Ja-in, who has been waiting for his mother through the 21,000 iterations since she promised to save him in reality.

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Therefore, the movie The Great Flood highlights the importance of motherly love and the promise she made to her son, which motivated the AI model to succeed and eventually complete the training of the Emotion Engine.

Edited by Aishwarya Sai