Sitges 2024: ‘Rich Flu’ Review
Stars: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rafe Spall, Timothy Spall, Lorraine Bracco, Dixie Egerickx | Written by David Desola, Sam Steiner | Directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
The new film from Spanish director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, who made Netflix horror hit The Platform, Rich Flu is an English language Contagion-esque thriller about a deadly virus that only affects the super-rich. Given that intriguing premise, the end result is something of a mixed bag, but it’s not without its moments and it’s solidly anchored by a terrific lead performance.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Laura, a Hollywood executive who’s introduced listening to a series of movie pitches, one of which sounds quite similar to the film we’re actually watching. The last to pitch ends up being her ex-husband Tony (Rafe Spall), who’s unhappy that she’s about to leave Barcelona and relocate to London with their teenage daughter Anna (Dixie Egerickx), and makes a last-ditch plea for her to stay.
However, Laura’s personal problems are quickly overshadowed by the global outbreak of the aforementioned deadly virus, the main symptoms of which appear to be weirdly glowing teeth. To make matters worse, Laura’s misfortunes increase dramatically when she’s promoted and handed billions of dollars worth of stock in her company by CEO Sebastian Snail (Timothy Spall), a not-entirely-selfless act, seeing as it effectively removes him from the virus’ path and puts Laura at risk instead.
With banks and stock markets closing and no way of divesting herself of her newfound wealth, Laura heads for the countryside, joining Tony and Anna at the commune-style home of her mother (Lorraine Bracco). But can the virus be far behind?
Winstead is excellent, comfortably carrying the entire film (she’s in almost every scene) and giving Laura some complex layers, to the point where you’re not entirely sure just how much you should be rooting for her survival. Equally, Rafe Spall is solid as Tony and there’s an amusingly grumpy turn from xx (proving that teenagers can be stroppy even in the midst of a deadly pandemic), as well as more colourful turns from both Spall Snr. (clearly enjoying himself) and Lorraine Bracco.
Rich Flu’s strongest element is its sense of atmosphere, which has a creeping pervasiveness in terms of the corruptive power of wealth. To that end, the film’s most emotional scenes come from small, human moments – for example, there’s an act of betrayal that is genuinely shocking and makes you see a key character in a new light.
The main problem with the film is that the virus itself is very poorly defined, with no clarification on exactly how it progresses, or how it is transmitted. By rights, given the fact that Laura becomes one of the richest people in the country, she should be ill, but there’s never a sense of how much danger she is in.
What’s doubly frustrating is that this could have easily been solved by having news channels (already ever-present in the narrative) chart the deaths via published Rich Lists, a simple device that could have significantly increased the tension.
Another problem is that despite its promising opening, Rich Flu doesn’t have nearly as much fun with the premise as you might hope. In particular, it really needed a social media-owning tech billionaire to die horribly, or a seemingly super-rich figure to miraculously survive because it turned out they were lying about their personal worth. In other words, a degree of razor-sharp satire would not have gone amiss, and feels like a missed opportunity.
It’s also fair to say that the film drags a little towards the end and becomes a little too on-the-nose (what if the rich were effectively desperate refugees etc), but Rich Flu rallies for a gripping final few minutes and has a great closing shot. However, it’s hard not to bemoan the lack of a sharper rich vs poor conflict, especially given the premise of Gaztelu-Urrutia’s previous film.
*** 3/5
Rich Flu screened as part of this year’s Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival.
