Netflix has yet another international hit film on its hands. This latest success brings 2025 to a close by cementing that Netflix has its finger on the pulse when it comes to giving viewers content they don’t even realize is waiting out there in international markets – but come to love it the most. From Squid Game to this year’s hit series Last Samurai Standing, Asia has been a particularly big crossover market for Netflix, and today is no different.
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The Korean film The Great Flood is currently ranked at no. 1 on Netflix’s US movie charts, after being released on December 19th. In just five days, the film has amassed nearly 30 million views, officially making it an international smash.
The Great Flood Is Netflix’s Latest International Hit
Netflix started a whole new wave in 2021 when Squid Game became the pop-culture fixation of pandemic lockdowns. The series did more to turn American viewers onto the shows and films of Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, and other Asian regions than any non-English language project before it – and Netflix didn’t let up on the gas. Series like Alice in Borderland and All of Us Are Dead soon followed, and Asian-language programming has since grown into a regular staple of Netflix’s programming.
The Great Flood has a story that marries disaster-survival with a timely socio-political mystery that many viewers may not expect. As the synopsis teases, “A great flood has hit planet Earth. People, including An Na (Kim Da-mi) and Hee Jo (Park Hae-soo), struggle to survive in their apartment building, which is sinking into the water. An Na is an AI development researcher, and Hee Jo belongs to a human resource security team, who is trying to save An Na from the disaster. But why is Hee Jo trying to save An Na, and who is behind it?”
Obviously, the marriage of a natural global disaster and AI technology is intriguing, to say the least. In its review of the film (mild spoilers), Variety critic Dennis Harvey writes, “It’s an ambitious shotgun marriage of too many ideas that end up seeming underdeveloped and rushed within a conventional feature runtime. Nonetheless, Flood should divert Netflix viewers looking for the kind of big, CGI-laden entertainment that has room for both tsunamis and spaceships.”
It’ll be interesting to see just how long The Great Flood retains this level of hype and engagement: Netflix is about to explode with viewers all signing in to watch Stranger Things Season 5 – Part 2 when it is released on Christmas Day.
The Great Flood is streaming on Netflix.
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