Spain/Chile/Brazil. 2024.
Crew
Director – Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa, Screenplay – Pedro Rivere Aurre, David Desola, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa & Sam Steiner, Based on a Screenplay by David Desola & Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa, Producers – Albert Soler Cuyas, Adrian Guerra, Carlos Juarez, Juan de Dios Larrain, Pablo Larrain, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa & Nuria Valls, Photography – Jon D. Dominguez, Music – Aranzazu Calleja, Visual Effects Supervisor – Vanessa G. Iglesias, Visual Effects – ABVFX Studios, Entropy Studios (Supervisors – Jaime Cebrian, Ernesto Cespedes & Ricardo G. Elipe) & Orca Estudios, Special Effects Supervisor – Pau Costa, Makeup Effects – May Effects (Supervisor – Lucia Solana), Production Design – Laia Colet. Production Company – Nostromo Pictures/Basque Films/Mamma Team/Rich Flu A.I.E./Fabula/Mogambo/Movistar +.
Cast
Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Laura Palmer), Rafe Spall (Toni), Lorraine Bracco (Martha), Cesar Domboy (Christian), Jonah Hauer-King (Sebastian Snail Jr), Timothy Spall (Sebastian Snail Sr), Dixie Ecgerickx (Anna), Astrid Jones (Alba), Richard Sammel (Von Willebrand)
Plot
Laura Palmer is an executive, working in film production with the company of billionaire Sebastian Snail Sr. As she returns from a trip to Alaska to an auction being held at Buckingham Palace, news reports are lighting up with an apparent plague that is causing the world’s wealthiest people to unexpectedly die. One such person dies in the midst of the auction. As the Rich Flu continues to claim victims, there is widespread panic. Snail has bequeathed his company to his son Sebastian Jr. In a panic, Sebastian Jr signs everything over to Laura, leaving her with a fortune of $900 million. As countries go into lockdown, Laura flees to Barcelona where her daughter has taken refuge with her mother. Even there, they are driven out by the locals and forced to flee to the North African coast.
Rich Flu was the third film from Spanish director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa. Munitxa had a streaming hit with The Platform (2019), a biting social allegory set in a vast vertical prison where a platform of food travels up and down each day. Most recently, Munitxa made a sequel to that with The Platform 2 (2024). Rich Flu was Munitxa’s first film made in English. All three of these are films that make savage criticisms of modern capitalist society.
Rich Flu has a wonderfully satiric premise – a virus affects the richest people, resulting in mass panic as people try to divest themselves from their wealth. The film saw streaming release in March 2025, exactly at the point where the USA is making the full blown and open slide into an oligarchy as the world’s wealthiest man proceeds to dismantle the inconvenient bureaucracy of the US government. (Elon Musk gets a snide dig in the film as one of the news headlines announces he is on Mars – presumably departed to avoid the effects of the plague).
It should be pointed out that Rich Flu not strictly a Plague and Pandemic film as no cause is specified for what is causing the spate of deaths – it is nicknamed the ‘Rich Flu’ in the news headlines and we do see people masking up to prevent spread, but that is as far as it goes. For some reason, the imminent death is signalled by the wealthy person developing teeth that glow a bright white.
The film starts in with a wonderful bite. The writing is sharp, particularly the way we pass through what starts seeming like a dystopian voiceover describing the scenario before we realise this is a film pitch session and then watch a montage of shots as various people make proposals to Mary Elizabeth Winstead, before it sinks in and we realise that one of these is Rafe Spall discussing divorce/custody with her. The dialogue in these and the subsequent scenes is sharp and acerbic. Mary Elizabeth Winstead remonstrates Rafe Spall “Are you a person or just a sort of animate haircut? I really can’t tell.”
The only point during these scenes I found it difficult to work out was what Mary Elizabeth’s job actually was – in the early scenes, we get the impression she is some development executive at a film studio, whereas the later scenes with Timothy Spall talking about his enthusiasm for capitalism to the Alaskan locals give the impression his company is more wide-ranging than that. Certainly, the film gives great screen time to Mary Elizabeth Winstead. This is the first time I have seen Winstead playing a role where she is not cast as a teenager or someone in her twenties – in actuality, Winstead hits forty this year – and she holds the screen with a class and elegance, more than believably fitting into the role.
Rich Flu works quite well during the panic we see among the wealthy as they try to deal with the situation – a scene with Jonah Hauer-King quitting leaving Mary Elizabeth finding she now has a personal fortune of $900 million, or her later attempts to persuade assistant Cesar Domboy to temporarily take hold of her assets ‘because of her divorce’ where his horrified reaction says all there needs to be. There is the potent image of an airfield with a line-up of abandoned luxury cars and the struggle to get aboard a plane flight outwards, which ends with an argument over an elderly woman bringing her chihuahua and one nasty image as a man promptly grabs the dog and tosses it away only for it to be splattered by a passing plane.
The problem with Rich Flu is that it has a great satiric idea, although doesn’t quite know what to do with it dramatically. The running time (just short of two hours) is padded with a lot of stuff about Mary Elizabeth’s domestics – did we really need the side trip to Alaska and encounter with Timothy Spall (Rafe’s father)? It is a case of a film with a good idea but once we get past that, which takes up most of the first half of the film, it is at a loss of how to dramatically compound it. Once we arrive in Barcelona and meet Lorraine Bracco as Mary Elizebth’s mother at the halfway point, the film slows down. The rest of the film follows the party as they depart for Africa and resettle in a tiny village abandoning their possessions, although this does at least lead to a barbed final scene.
Trailer here