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It has been ten years since writer/director Na Hong-jin got behind the camera for his terrifying horror picture, The Wailing. Ten years since the filmmaker left us with our jaws open, gutted by that film’s shocking ending. For a decade, audiences have waited with eager anticipation for what new terror he’d unleash next. Now, we finally have an answer in the creature feature, Hope.
My friends, I’m thrilled to report…it was worth the wait.
Set in the South Korean town of Hope Harbor, we meet Beom Seok (Hwang Jung-min), the sheriff of a small police force. His day begins with investigating a dead cow left in the road. Not just any dead cow, though. One with enormous claw marks left in its carcass. Some hunters think it might’ve been a tiger, but not Seok. Before long, he encounters the massive, vicious creature responsible as it tears through town, leaving destruction and bodies in its wake. Worse, there’s more than one. If the sheriff and anyone else want to make it out alive, they’ll need all the hope (and luck) they can get.
I grew up in the nineties. For me, that was the golden era of blockbuster monster movies: The Mummy, Deep Blue Sea, The Relic, and, yes, Jurassic Park. Big, often dumb, wildly entertaining, and thrilling creature features that took you on a ride. Thanks to less risk-taking and budgets saved for expensive superhero movies, they’re fewer and farther between these days. Hope is here to return us to the golden era of edge-of-your-seat monster movies.
A nearly three-hour film with two long chase sequences that make up a majority of the runtime, Hope is like Mad Max: Fury Road with monsters. Once we leave the dead cow, Seok heads to town, and the film takes off like a screaming banshee out of Hell. The poor bastard arrives just in time to find the village decimated. Buildings are torn up; Bloody bodies lie strewn about; Gunfire pops off in the distance while fires burn nearby. For what feels like the next hour, Hong-jin takes audiences through a chaotic warzone. We’re right there with Seok as he runs into group after group, some hiding, some fighting, all utterly incapable of bringing down the thing that has invaded their town.
The filmmaker forces the audience to experience the hopelessness of facing the enormous threat. People are nothing more than rag dolls to the creatures of Hope. We watch as cars are thrown into civilians, smashing them to pieces. Bodies are whipped into each other like playthings. Bullets do nothing. All of which makes encounters with the creatures that much more terrifying.
Mere words cannot do proper justice to the stunning scale of Hope. When I say that Hong-jin turns the village into a war zone, I mean a war zone. Every corner Seok turns, he finds devastation. The filmmaker puts every penny of the budget on screen. There’s so much destruction, so much blood, that I found myself feeling sorry for the production assistants who had to clean it up. But I imagine even they would tell me it was worth it for how extraordinary the film looks.
Coupled with the applause-worthy set design is a pulse-pounding score from Michael Abels and Hong Kyung-pyo’s immaculate cinematography that drops you right into the action. Whether low to the ground to emphasize the size of the chaos or right on top of the characters, we’re always moving/running. One after another, Hope unleashes exhilarating sequences that leave you breathless. Edge of your seat? I fell off my goddamn seat before the first reel ended. And I never got back up.
By the time the first chase finished, I could hear my theater breathe a sigh of relief. We were already exhausted (in the best possible way). And there was still so much more to come.
Though the creatures themselves are extraordinarily quick, vicious, and unique in their designs, the rumors are unfortunately true; the CG just isn’t good. Worse, there’s quite a bit of it. That’s disappointing, too, because the rest of the effects (mostly practical) are all expertly crafted. So, when you put the creatures side by side with anything else, they feel like the wrong Legos shoved together. But…and this is a big but…the thrills of Hope are just too extraordinary for any of that to matter.
The same goes for the characters. While The Wailing explored the very souls of the main cast, the same can’t be said for Hope. Rather than any deep development, characters are given basic personality traits like “brave” or “lucky”, without ever really expanding on who they are as people. Hong-jin also dips back into old tricks, with Seok as another somewhat cowardly cop terrified of his own shadow. An old trick, sure, but an effective one that makes for plenty of laughs.
After seeing The Wailing, you may be surprised by Hope‘s comedic nature. If The Wailing was Hong-jin’s quiet, unsettling supernatural drama, Hope is the filmmaker’s polar opposite tribute to the bombastic monster movies of the ’90s. Situational humor abounds, whether it be Seok trying to figure out what to do with someone he accidentally shoots, cop Sung Ae (Hoyeon) screaming about how “hot” a specific act of heroism is, or a recount of the creatures that involves the storyteller describing in detail his attempt to hold in explosive diarrhea. This time, the filmmaker doesn’t necessarily want to scare you. He wants you to have a great fucking time at the movies, and that’s exactly what Hope is.
Don’t take that to mean that nothing is going on beneath the surface, either. For all its thrills, laughs, and big, dumb monster movie fun, Hong-jin isn’t the sort of filmmaker to deliver your average creature feature. Like The Wailing, themes of mistrust and violence in the face of fear course through Hope. Early on, we see signs in town advising citizens to report spies, painting a picture of a place wary of outsiders. That’s exactly what these creatures are: Monsters from the outside who aren’t as monstrous as they first appear, deserving of an empathy most wouldn’t grant them.
So no, Hope isn’t as simple as it seems at first, and that’s oddly its largest issue. I cannot stress enough that the film contains one of the most baffling endings I’ve seen in years. It’s like having a long, enjoyable conversation with someone who suddenly starts talking gibberish. Hope ends so abruptly that I sat there for a moment thinking it was a joke. It couldn’t be over. Right? Wrong. Audiences should know that Hong-jin intends to make a sequel. That’s certainly apparent with the cliffhanger ending. But I’d be lying if I said it couldn’t have been presented in a far less jarring manner.
If not for the dumbfounding final minutes, some bad CG, and occasionally awkward pacing, I’d say Hope was a near-perfect blockbuster creature feature. It’s on par with The Host as one of the coolest monster movies to ever come out of South Korea. Not since Godzilla Minus One have I left a giant monster flick with the giddy energy that Hope gave me. Now, my only hope is that Hong-jin delivers that next chapter, because this story’s too exciting to end where it does and call it a day.
Hope roars into theaters on September 9th via Neon.
Summary
‘Hope’s’ issues like thinly-written characters and baffling narrative choices become easy to forgive thanks to Na Hong-jin’s propulsive filmmaking and exhilarating giant monster movie action that’ll leave viewers speechless.
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