Review: ‘Hope’ is a weirdly flawed yet fascinating creature feature

Korean director Na Hong-jin’s first film in ten years since The Wailing, which has managed to become a horror streaming mainstay in the U.S., takes us to a rural, mountainous village near the North Korean border where shit is about to hit the fan. Bumbling local police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min, The Wailing, New World) is out of his depth, trying to track a massive creature that’s been slaughtering local livestock. What comes next is both deeply compelling and strangely puzzling. 

Pretty much immediately after Bum-seok returns to town, the town is under attack by…something. We don’t see the creature until an hour into the film, but what happens before then is a masterclass of filmmaking. Bum-seok is always a step behind the inhumanly fast beast, and what starts with deep gashes and big holes in the sides of buildings becomes more and more destruction as the police chief circles the small town he’s responsible for. Without ever seeing it, we feel the terror and immensity of whatever is rampaging through the streets. Hope is the most expensive South Korean film ever made, and you can see where the money went: spectacularly destroying this town. 

When we do finally get to see the creature, most people are going to have some questions. Why does it look like that? Did they do the CGI for this movie using a PlayStation 2? Na Hong-jin and team make some pretty bold choices here that I have to believe are intentional choices, given the director’s skill (his ultra-bleak detective film The Chaser is one of my favorites of the 2000s South Korean new wave). Sometimes those choices work better when you combine CGI with practical disaster effects and make the creatures look and move like nothing else. Later on, when a creature shows up with an approximation of Michael Fassbender’s face, it’s either a total joke or the stuff of lo-fi computer nightmares. 

During a mid-section breather, Bum-seok and rookie cop Sung-ae (Jung Ho-yeon, Squid Game), who doesn’t have much of a part but has one of the most badass introductions of all time, try to find out more about the creature. Part of this involves a hysterical interview with an old man who saw the creature in the forest at the worst possible time, which I won’t spoil for its sheer ridiculousness. 

And then we’re off to the forest for what’s essentially a rehash of the beginning, this time with a crew of bumbling hunters led by the police chief’s cousin, Sung-ki (Zo In-sung, A Dirty Carnival). Initially as exciting as the first section, the forest chase quickly gets repetitive and leads to a truly non-ending that seems to set up a sequel, but will most likely end the movie with a confused shrug. 

I’m still not totally sure what to make of Hope, even so far as whether it’s trying to emulate or critique these types of Hollywood movies. My assumption is the latter due to the prominent anti-North Korean propaganda and the oafish protagonists who find themselves involved in a larger cosmic arrangement they can’t begin to understand and can only react to with increasingly larger guns. 

So while this is not the slam-dunk Korean version of an American blockbuster you might expect, with major highs and lows, those highs make Hope worth a watch. And even the lows are still compelling thanks to the deeply odd choices made. If you go into it knowing this is going to be a weirdly flawed yet fascinating experience, you’re going to get the most out of it.