Rich Flu is a 2024 English-language Spanish film written, directed, and produced by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia. The film stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lorraine Bracco, Timothy Spall, and more. It premiered at the Sitges Film Festival in 2024 and was later released digitally in the U.S. in June 2026 before arriving on Hulu and Disney+ in September.

The premise is interesting: a mysterious disease begins targeting some of the richest people in the world, starting with billionaires and then working its way down through the wealthy. Suddenly, having money and assets becomes a liability instead of a privilege.

I will say that the concept had me interested from the beginning. Unfortunately, the movie itself didn’t quite live up to the concept.

The movie starts off very slowly, and it isn’t until around the middle that things really begin to unravel. From there, the story picks up, but by that point I was already questioning where this movie was going.

My biggest issue is that the concept and the execution just didn’t come together well. There are a lot of ideas being thrown at you, but they don’t always connect in a way that makes the story feel cohesive. Even other reviews have pointed out that the film’s first half is more engaging while the second half becomes more diluted and less focused.

Then there’s the whole storyline involving the wealthy fleeing to Africa. The movie seems to use this as part of its commentary about privileges, wealth, refugees, and social inequality, but the way it was presented didn’t work for me. It felt uncomfortable and, at times, almost condescending in how the story portrayed wealthy Europeans suddenly relying on places and communities they previously had little connection to as an escape from the crisis. The idea could have been explored in a much more thoughtful way.

And that’s really my biggest problem with Rich Flu: I understand what the filmmaker was trying to say, but I don’t think the movie delivered the message effectively.

By the end, I was sitting there thinking, “Okay…what exactly did I just watch, and what was the point?”

There are some interesting ideas here, and the cast does a solid job with the material. But having a great concept isn’t enough if the story doesn’t know how to bring all those ideas together. The film’s social commentary is obvious, yet somehow the overall message still feels muddled.

Couple of Critics Verdict: Rich Flu had the potential to be an interesting social thriller, but the execution didn’t quite match the concept. It starts slowly, becomes increasingly convoluted, and ultimately left me more confused than impressed.