Michael Fairbanks
Na Hong-jin’s Hope is a gunfire-ridden monster mash driven by the storytelling language of Playstation 3 and Xbox 360-era video games. This was the period where every developer was looking for their Halo-esque sci-fi shooter franchise. The formula was simple. Soldiers in a decimated version of Earth face off against otherworldly creatures with both human and alien weapons. We’re talking Gears of War, Resistance: Fall of Man, Crisis and dozens of lesser imitators. Hope is a film for people who fast forward through the first hour of most alien movies. Despite its colossal 157-minute runtime, it has no interest in using aliens to make a profound statement on human nature or what our future could look like. Na Hong-jin sees these abominations as ungodly instruments of death and destruction that must be shot to death by any means necessary. Once we get a look at their ugly mugs, it’s hard to disagree.
We follow Hope Harbor police chief Go Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) on the most exhausting day of his life. What starts as an inspection of the suspicious mutilation of a dead cow spirals into a relentless chase through what remains of his fishing village. A terrifying beast has torn through every building and person in sight. Bum-seok and his deputy Im Sung-ae (Hoyeon) are forced to track down and subdue this beast through a lengthy high speed chase. Meanwhile, Bum-seok’s second cousin Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) and his hunting buddies investigate further disturbances in the neighboring woods.
The opening tour through the decimated remains of Hope Harbor is the film’s most exhilarating (if slightly overlong) segment. The monster is obscured for a substantial amount of time. As Bum-seok swings his gun through one ravaged city street after another, dozens of human and animal corpses lie upon the rubble. This establishes the ethos of practical chaos that makes Hope work. As anyone who laughed the film out of Cannes will tell you, the visual effects that bring the aliens to life are a bit dodgy. The design work is perfect. These things look disgusting and pitiful. However, we can often tell that they are not occupying the same space as our characters. The renderings at times are a bit incomplete and their motions can lack real weight. Hong-jin solves this by achieving nearly every other aspect of the nonstop action in-camera. We’re watching real environments be demolished as our characters dodge and blast their way through whatever the aliens throw at them. The immersive camerawork and sound design seal the deal. The time spent riding on the side of a patrol car or galloping behind a horse as these aliens scream and lunge at our heroes while smashing their friends into pulp is transcendent. As far as pure filmmaking muscle goes, these are some of the best set pieces that a Sci-Fi popcorn movie has delivered in quite some time.
Hope thrives when it is embracing this forward motion. When we stop to take in what is happening, we realize that there is not much going on with these characters. Our actors certainly aren’t bad. They’re all delivering the frantic performances that Hong-jin is looking for. They just never evolve beyond tropes. Bum-seok is temperamental and wants to keep everyone under control. Hoyeon is more of a listener and is arguably more competent when it is time to jump into action. In-sung is more reckless and brash than his cousin and finds himself in horrific predicaments because he simply won’t turn around. These are not complex people and Hope never pretends that they are. Thankfully, Hong-jin’s screenplay often emphasizes humor over pathos. We’re often communicating via glib banter that is often genuinely funny, especially when we’re dealing with regular people describing their own hair raising encounters with the beasts.
Hope dips into being outright hokey only when it starts to shoehorn in some sparse lore about the aliens. Three American actors are stunt cast as the head honchos who only get a precious few minutes to discuss their next moves in a fictional language. Most of these interactions are siphoned off until late in the third act. Hong-jin is not subtle about his desire to continue this story and as such never lets the breakneck pace calm down even when the credits are about to roll. Hope doesn’t end so much as it simply runs out of time. A more poignant human-centric final moment, even if it was something subtle, might’ve been enough to push this from being a rockling blockbuster into a truly great film.
Folks who find themselves exhausted by carnage and noise need not apply. Hope is a thrill ride for those who can completely submit to its whims. Thankfully, the craft is there to back it up. While it lacks his emotional punch, there are chase sequences in Hope that approach Judgement Day era James Cameron levels of meticulous action design. It’s a creature feature with no empathy. Monsters are monsters and people are the only animals capable of putting them in their place. As far as pure spectacle goes — you will not do better in 2026.
