We’re kicking off this year’s Octoberween festivities with a recent South Korean monster movie that is absolutely bonkers.
Hope (2026):
Director: Na Hong-jin
Screenwriter: Na Hong-jin
Starring: Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Hoyeon, Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander
The Plot: Rural police chief Beom Seok (Hwang Jung-min) starts off his day investigating a mutilated cow. Local hunters, led by his second cousin Sung Ki (Zo In-sung), suspect a tiger is responsible. They soon discover that something much more dangerous than a tiger has been lurking in the woods, and now it’s headed into town.
South Korean director Na Hong-jin’s previous film was the offbeat and extremely unsettling supernatural horror The Wailing. That movie also featured regular members of a rural community confronting an otherworldly threat and their own xenophobia (it also has a great “normal people encounter a zombie for the first time” scene). Hope has a similar setting and thematic concerns, but mostly swaps out horror for sci-fi action.
The film’s R-rating sometimes feels at odds with its sci-fi blockbuster ambitions. Hope doesn’t play as a “grown up movie” the way The Wailing does. Ideas and characters are presented simply and some of the graphic violence comes across as cartoonish. Maybe in a post-Deadpool world this is just what blockbusters look like. At the very least, Hope has much more to offer on a filmmaking level than any Marvel movie.
Hope does have some genuinely frightening sequences, especially in the much tighter first half. The film cuts back and forth between an increasingly terrified Beom Seok following a trail of destruction through his town and the hunters in the forest slowly realizing that the thing they’re after definitely isn’t a tiger. And then there are scenes like the one where an injured villager recounts a creepy moment in the forest. The way that Na Hong-jin manages to blend mounting dread and laugh-out-loud absurdity in the same sequence is masterful. I’m no Korean cinema expert, but I have learned to roll with big tonal swings. This film is certainly no exception.
Once it starts answering questions raised during the first half, Hope gets messier. It doesn’t exactly run out of steam, but we spend enough downtime with the characters that their thinness becomes an issue. Nobody really has a backstory or interests outside of the plot. If characters like Beom Seok and his deputy Sung Ae (Hoyeon) have personalities, that’s more a testament to the actors’ charisma than to the nuances of the script. As the film goes on, characters spend more time running and shooting than talking. This wouldn’t be a problem if the chase scenes weren’t so interminable. Sequences that start out frantic become plodding and repetitive, weighed down by Michael Abels’ bombastic score (I like the Mad Max: Fury Road soundtrack as much as the next guy, but at this point I think it’s been copied enough).
Without giving too much away, the creature design is…fine. Maybe I’ve just seen too many creature features to be impressed by anything anymore. The way the things move is creepier and more memorable than what they look like up close. Using motion capture creates some uncanny visuals, but seems like it won’t really pay off until a presumed sequel. As it is, Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander aren’t tasked with exhibiting a wide emotional range here (they play two of the creatures in the wildest bit of casting I’ve seen in some time).
Hope benefits from a strong cast and some excellent direction. However, like so many sci-fi action blockbusters before it, the film suffers from a messy script and bloated runtime. Yet for all my criticisms, Hope is often very entertaining. When it works, it works extremely well. A tighter focus would have made for a more satisfying watch, but I can’t say I didn’t get my money’s worth. It’s a whole lotta movie.
