RICH FLU Review

As it stands, I am sitting at 100 new release movies watched across 2026. Big ol' number one-hundred was Resident Evil, and that was a huge hit for me. Last year, I managed 117 new releases watched for 2025, and here I am not even at the end of September as of this writing, and I'm at triple digits already! Even though I'm getting fewer screener movies than I used to, I'm well on my way to beat out last year's personal best.

I'm honestly doing a bang up job on movie watching this year, be it new releases or not. I'm averaging more than one movie per day, and my personal goal? Of seeing two hundred movies I've never seen before? Well I blew by that months ago! On top of one hundred new releases, I'm at over one hundred and sixty other first time watches!

I promise I have a life. I just have a lot of time, too. And since my time is dedicated to my website and podcast, my time gets directed towards cinematic outings.

The problem is that I can't QUITE figure out how to count today's movie.

You see, Letterboxd has Rich Flu (how on Earth did they not call this thing Richfluenza, which actually somehow rolls off the tongue WAY better than "Rich Flu") listed as a 2024 release, but IMDb tells me it was mass released in the United States in June 2026.

So is this a new release or an Other First Time Watch?

Further IMDb research revealed that Rich Flu debuted at a film festival in 2024, and I never personally count those as the official release date. I always go by the mass release date. So it's a new release, right?

Not so fast.

Rich Flu was leaked out across several countries in 2025. Starting in Germany, it spread--not unlike a virus!--through Spain, Greece, Russia, The Philippines, and more by year's end. It just did not land in the United States until 2026.

So... come on. What do I do?

Given that it was mass-released in foreign nations, I ultimately went with Rich Flu being an Other First Time Watch. Which was frustrating, as I didn't find this out until the film ended, and I would likely not have watched it if I had known it wasn't brand new!

Whatever it counts as, Rich Flu is currently available on Hulu in The United States. It takes place in a time similar to our own where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; as income and asset inequality is growing at a tremendous pace. Our main character is Laura, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. She is climbing the ladder at her career, even as her personal life is in shambles--she is feuding with her ex-husband over custody of their 16 year old daughter.

Shortly after accepting a new position and opportunity at her job, it becomes apparent that there is a rapidly spread disease that is targeting and violently killing the richest people on Earth. And seeing the writing on the wall, her boss has just back-doored her $900 million in stock options.

Laura is one of the world's one percent just in time to see that kind of person shunned, hunted, and exiled over the strange new illness. Will she manage to escape her fate before the sickness finds her, too?

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Mary Elizabeth Winstead is still a good actress, even when given NOTHING to work with. I have been a fan of hers for years, and she has done brilliant work across efforts like The Thing (2011), Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, and 10 Cloverfield Lane. It's easy to say she still has the talent to make movies work.

+ The movie is as timely as it could be with the culture and society of the modern world. We live in an era where capitalism is just making everything worse for everyone, and the world just crowned its first ever trillionaire. We are living in simply absurd times, and those times are ripe to be poked by a sensible picture...

- This is not that picture, however! The entire premise of the movie revolves around a somehow magical disease that only affects the rich. How it does so is never explained, nor is everyone's terror over it when, again, IT ONLY AFFECTS THE RICH. Everything here is awful nonsense, and if COVID taught us anything, it's that society would never take this disease seriously anyway. Basically, nothing here is believable, and the plot is insipid. It's essentially "Eat The Rich" wish fulfillment, which I get, but man... make a better movie around it. 

- The lighting and editing in the darker moments make the film near impossible to see. Not that this is an action-heavy movie, but the few action sequences it has are a nightmare to try to follow. 

OVERALL

Whoof. Affection for Mary Elizabeth Winstead aside, this was genuinely one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time. My big competition for this for worst movie I've seen in all of 2026 are Chum and Are You There?, and I think Rich Flu was worse than Are You There? for sure. It's pretty neck-and-neck with Chum. It's just so wildly poorly done! What could have been a solid tale of wealth disparity and class warfare becomes a goofy fable. Don't bother with this.

🍿 SCORE = 10 / 100