Flu

 (2013)***1/2

A man contracts a deadly mystery flu while smuggling in illegal immigrants. He is shown coughing and spreading the germs throughout Seoul and soon people everywhere are sick and dying. The government orders a complete shutdown while specialists scramble to generate a vaccine. The story mainly centers around the young adorable daughter of one of the infectious disease specialists who contracts the flu while helping a homeless man. She winds up separated from her mother and shoved into the general population quarantine where the sick are poorly treated and herded like cattle to die in mass graves. It becomes a race against time for her mother to not only find a cure but to find her daughter before it is too late.

I debated long and hard before deciding to watch this Korean film about a massive deadly flu epidemic. I am a bit of a germaphobe so watching these types of films make me extremely uncomfortable. The film is a little too long and that was the only real problem I had with it. The slow motion scenes of people coughing as microscopic germs landed in their coffee or on their food invoked such paranoia in me, I swear I nearly shut the film off twice because it was freaking me out. I stayed tuned in because I had to know the outcome of the little girl, she was the sweetest little thing and it broke my heart when she became ill. Overall, this is a well done, tragic and thought provoking film just don't watch it when you're sick.