Hope Review

South Korea has been waiting 20 years for the next great monster flick to follow up Bong Joon Ho’s terrific The Host. Hope from the director of The Wailing and The Chaser, Na Hong-jin, is exactly what we’ve been waiting for. It’s big, loud, and pedal-to-the-metal – a monster thriller blockbuster of epic blockbuster proportions that starts off intimate and incredibly well constructed. Both films notably share elements of physical and dark comedy, with flawed protagonists who frequently fall over themselves and make poor judgments.

Set in the coastal town of Hope Harbour, a mysteriously misplaced bull corpse prompts local police sergeant Ko Beom-seok, played by The Wailing’s Hwang Jung-min, to investigate. A small group of locals and farmers joins Beom-seok, led by Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung), puzzling over what predator could mutilate the bull and place it so far from home. We laugh at their ignorance as they concoct a foolhardy explanation that a Siberian tiger must have paradoxically crossed the North Korean minefields and barbed fences to reach Hope, of all places. Bum-seok isn’t the brightest bloke and entertains the tiger notion, with his colleagues lambasting such a story as virtually impossible. 

For the next hour, we get a steady build-up of tension as we follow in the wake of this supposed tiger going on a rampage throughout the morning. The shots of the rural surroundings establish Hope Harbour as a knowable and remote location. It is a reasonably small town and community, and everyone is armed and anxious about their neighbours to the north. When Bum-seok makes it into town, he is advised about pockets of chaos erupting around the town. Gunfire cracks in the near distance, throwing the protagonist into a panic. The audio design here sounds great, the shots sounding like they’re only a couple of blocks away. We can’t see what’s going down, but we can hear disaster unfolding. Instead, we are treated to a series of low-angled shots following Bum-seok as he drives and dashes about town, witnessing explosions and vehicles tossed about. Whatever is wreaking havoc is just out of sight, always around the next corner, and Bum-seok is only ever in time to witness the horrific fallout but never the cause. The building tension is electric, and the insistence on keeping the camera on Bum-seok and the rapidly devolving streets (all heavily detailed in their diminishing states) creates an effective atmosphere of dread. All of this is happening in broad daylight too. 

Hope seems to play out in real time, making its unfolding events easy to follow across its small cast of compelling characters. Sung-ki heads his squad of locals back to the farm where the bulls are from, leading to their own series of horrific discoveries that take them into Hope’s nearby forest. Hope typically follows two, no more than three perspectives at a time as it runs its course.

Squid Game season one’s Jung Ho-yeon plays another police officer named Im Sung-ae, who turns up in badass Sarah Connor fashion in a cop car with an automatic rifle in tow just as the town goes properly to hell. She is the bright-eyed cadet to Bum-seok’s cowardly, compromising chief, and her optimism and values-centric approach to confronting the town’s invading creature provides a few moments of genuine comedic relief. 

The cast work well together, with this hapless cohort of rural citizens struggling to face a threat they don’t understand with their backwards blend of ‘common sense’ and mistrust of one another’s competency. This is hilariously crystallised when our police chief accidentally opens fire on the locals several times, and we see how these extremely dangerous situations are resolved through daft arguments with the townspeople. Hope, more like hopeless.

After the first act has us walking, running, and drifting our way through the town’s dusty streets, the action moves to the locals investigating the nearby forest for further evidence of the monster, and culminates in a sequence of high-octane horse and car chases that crater the quiet roads outside of town. Hope is a blockbuster the likes of which we’ve never seen before from a South Korean production, and its commitment to standing alongside greats like Terminator 2 and Transformers is as exemplary as it is unexpected. The latter especially. The second act of Hope shifts gears from the lurking creature stalking streets to a big showdown amidst the trees that sees the monster go full Transformers: Rise of the Beasts in a most surprising way that will be clear when revealed, but I cannot spoil. There are a few missteps that arise later in the film, but Hope’s first hour is amongst the best in the genre and may be my favourite opening act of a monster flick in recent years. 

From the second act onwards, the film leaves behind its escalating tension in favour of the  thrillingly action-packed chase sequences. It is also at this point that it becomes clear that the cast of characters we’ve come to like may be impervious to the devastating monster. Some face-to-face moments emphasise the destructive power of the creature. Yet time and again, whenever our protagonists take a wallop from the beast that seems to kill everyone else in one swipe, they simply get up and dust off. Some outrageous moments have our heroes flung about in ways that no human could possibly withstand, yet they immediately walk it off. This happens enough times that the crucial element of risk that a thriller relies upon is all but gone, and as exciting and kinetic as the action is, the stakes just aren’t there. Again, it all goes back to Transformers, where our heroes are forever immune to the otherwise society-levelling antics of the fearsome foe. This issue persists right through to the ending and mid-credits scene, showing that the film is aware enough to poke fun at itself for this.

The final act is a fun bit of messy blockbuster exploitation. A series of chases that lead onto the rural roads outside of town where not a single piece of traffic exists. The direction can be exhilarating and feels at times a bit Fast and Furious, but skips a few too many beats to be coherent. There are scenes where anticipation builds up, our car overfilled with munitions and characters faced with impending doom. And then, despite so much close-camera build-up, the tension will just reset because a character supposedly did something spectacular off-screen that we don’t hear or see. It just smacks of missing shots or editing mishaps, and completely broke the tension for me, especially in the back half of this overlong sequence. Also, this act begins with shots establishing some comically over-the-top munitions that we should expect to see used at some point during this sequence, but are never seen again. Worse, this entire sequence ends somewhat abruptly before an egregiously misguided exposition dump about the monster that seeks to push the narrative stakes into the stratosphere but doesn’t work at all. The plight of our heroes and monster is left unresolved before an unforgivable fade-to-black. The credits roll with a mid-credits title card scene, all of which is tonally muddled, provides no closure and may be one of the weirder sequel teases I’ve ever seen. 

Final Thoughts 

Hope has an approach to pace that serves it incredibly well in the beginning. Everything starts with a dead bull and the subsequent hunt for a tiger. What rapidly proceeds to engulf a small town thereafter is hectic and exhilarating in equal measure. A series of mysteries is steadily built. By the end, the film doesn’t know what to do with the escalating stakes it establishes, instead opting for a strikingly odd sequence of dialogue that tries to add vague context to the mysteries of the film’s monster. A cut to black and an awkward mid-credits title card that trades in the audience’s suspension of disbelief for yet another bit of physical comic relief reveals an ending unsure of itself. Comedy, futility, fate, all thematically toyed with awkwardly in the film’s final few minutes. Most importantly, Hope does a South Korean monster blockbuster to rival A Quiet Place, arguably the best in the West right now. It’s ambitious, messy, and its first half is mercilessly riveting and effortlessly smart. Its unsure ending that cuts the action just before a likely gobsmacking third act could materialise is hard to forgive on any level. If you’re inclined to enjoy a big-budget blockbuster with brains or not, you owe it to yourself to see what Hope is about. 

Attended a review screening courtesy of the distributor.