Na Hong-jin (The Wailing, The Chaser)’s Hope hits theaters this Friday, and the film feels like nothing less than South Korea’s answer to the American blockbuster. At a reported $46 million, it’s the most expensive South Korean film ever made, and every dollar is seemingly thrown at putting an enormous monster movie on screen. But what makes Hope so interesting is where Na chooses to set that spectacle: the small, isolated rural community of Hope Harbor in North Korea. The setting is immediately apparent—not only from the omnipresent propaganda, but from the fact that the entire town is surrounded by land mines. Throw in a population with limited education, antiquated technology, scarce resources, and essentially no outside help, and the first hour suddenly plays out like an old school monster-on-the-rampage movie operating under an entirely different set of rules.
Luckily, there is one thing they have access to.
Guns.
Lots of guns…
That first hour is damn near flawless. The town’s short tempered chief of police, Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min), tracks the creature through what was once a sleepy community and has now been transformed into a war zone. It’s frantic, anxiety-inducing, and establishes an almost absurdly high bar for the bloody action that follows. The centerpiece is a roughly 40-minute set piece that is all gas, no brakes, as Bum-seok scrambles from one desperate situation to the next in search of safety, eventually crossing paths with Sung-ae (Hoyeon), a trigger-happy deputy with a demonically calm disposition behind the wheel.
At roughly 2 hours and 40 minutes, Hope very much feels like two movies stitched together. The first half is a monster rampage film, following a creature as it tears through the community and leaves destruction in its wake. Then, in the second half, we discover that the survivors who are still fighting for their lives, may have inadvertently caused something far larger: what initially looked like an isolated attack could actually be the beginning of an interplanetary incident. Suddenly, the film shifts from survival horror into something much more cosmic, forcing these characters to confront the consequences of what they’ve unleashed with another barrage of action that doesn’t let up until the credits roll.
There’s also the setup for a potential third story that isn’t included, which may frustrate some viewers. What some might call “no ending” feels more like the good old American blockbuster cliffhanger weaponized against us—coming after an onslaught of insane reveals and, just to really twist the knife, a mid-credits stinger. After nearly three hours of monsters, mayhem, and increasingly batshit crazy revelations, Hope basically looks you dead in the eye and says, “To be continued.” It’s either a maddening tease or the perfect final joke.
Personally, I found the first two chapters provide enough closure to make the film feel surprisingly cohesive, despite its massive scope and abrupt ending.
The film’s narrative and plotting are remarkably well executed, but its biggest weakness comes sadly in the creatures themselves. If you’ve seen your fair share of Eastern sci-fi, you probably know where this is going. Hope swings for the fences with some ambitious, completely CGI creations, but too often they look like they’ve wandered in from an early-aughts American blockbuster. Having recently revisited a bunch of those movies, I was probably more forgiving of the uneven CGI than most, but there’s no denying that the effects are the film’s one major stumbling block. That’s particularly unfortunate because these creatures aren’t merely spectacle; they’re required to carry a genuine emotional arc. When the effects don’t quite land, that emotional connection becomes harder to make—and when you can’t connect with the creatures at the center of the story, some of the film’s biggest swings inevitably lose their impact.
If I had to guess at the film’s themes, I think Hope is ultimately about what happens when an insular society is forced to confront a world it has spent its existence keeping at arm’s length—and there’s an interesting argument to be made that the “outside world” here could even be read as the United States. There’s chaos happening all around this isolated Korean community, but the people of Hope Harbor have largely built their lives around being cut off from it. Then the creatures suddenly arrive, and that isolation is no longer a choice. What initially appears to be a localized monster attack gradually reveals itself to be part of something much larger, forcing these people to reckon with a global—or even interplanetary—conflict they had absolutely no say in creating.
Hope is a masterfully executed, audacious swing, and I’d much rather watch a filmmaker take a few big, messy chances than play it safe. Na Hong-jin has essentially made a South Korean monster blockbuster that starts as a balls-to-the-wall creature feature and gradually mutates into something far stranger, more ambitious, and increasingly unhinged without ever letting up. Even when the CGI threatens to pull you out of the movie, the sheer confidence of the filmmaking keeps dragging you right back in. Hope may have its shortcomings, but when a movie serves up insane action set pieces, monsters, North Korea, land mines, guns, international paranoia, and the potential end of the world, I’m more than willing to forgive a few rough edges. Given the current IP obsessed sci-fi landscape in the states, I personally would like to thank South Korea for picking up the slack this summer.
