That was… absurd.
A backwater fishing town in South Korea must defend itself when a monstrous attacker terrorises them.
Hope is written and directed by Na Hong-jin (The Wailing) and stars Hwang Jung-min, Hoyeon (Squid Game), and Zo In-sung. There are other actors, but I implore you to not look up the casting or anything if you want no spoilers at all. In fact, this review will attempt to avoid some spoilers, but not all. It is impossible to talk about the film without addressing some of what happens.
A single summary of my thoughts are: it is an ambitious movie, but flawed. I greatly enjoy original science fiction movies, and Asian cinema. So it gets subjective approval, but objectively there are glaring problems.
Let’s get into it.
The film starts with country yokels and a police chief finding a dead cow blocking a road. They debate what could have caused such horrible damage. They decide it must be a tiger… despite there being no evidence a tiger could be local to the area. But as the police chief returns to town, increasingly strange evidence appears. Before long, the entire town is devastated by some unknown attacker that kills anyone it encounters. Can the tiny town’s locals prevent whatever is happening?
This movie reminds us a lot of Bong Joon Ho’s The Host from 2006. It has a realistic, grounded aesthetic and cinematography, comedic performances and writing, but a violent monster at its centre. But unlike Parasite‘s director’s earlier movie, Na Hong-jin’s experience in directing and writing is found wanting with Hope.
Running at two hours and forty minutes, Hope is a long film. That’s only ten minutes shy of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. But unlike that movie, it felt long. By and large, this is due to pacing in the macro and in the micro. Scenes in Hope are needlessly long, while the overall plotting feels improvised and meandering.
Another issue adding to its lengthy feel, is its tone. Korean cinema is no stranger to an off-kilter tone. Some of the best movies from the region are well-known for having dark humour or levity-in-face-of-adversity writing and direction. But Hope seems to want its cake and eat it too. One minute it asks us to be afraid, or sympathetic, or see earnest intentions in characters. The next minute, we have a five minute scene of a man describing his diarrhea. In detail. Now, I did find that particular scene very funny. But largely in a vacuum. When the film is taken as a whole, it is not the sum of its parts. We don’t need long moments of people just masticating, do we?
We also have some very ropey CGI.
The opening act of this movie is quite excellent. Our police chief (Hwang Jung-min) Beom Seok (oddly, the subtitles wrote it as Bum Seok – seemingly these are different spellings for the same name) is completely ill-equipped for an unseen terror in his town. The town is shredded, utterly destroyed. Bodies lying everywhere. Incredible violence suggesting incredible strength.
Then we see the monster… and the film only escalates seeing the monster from there. It is very unconvincing for the rest of the run-time. This leads to some very clunky, weightless and (aforementioned) lengthy action sequences. Not to mention the heroes in this movie are apparently indestructible. You cannot fling a man thirty metres into a tree, several times, and have him fine afterwards.
Perhaps the CGI would fare better on a smaller screen?
The ending of the movie is absurd. The entire theatre was bewildered and laughing, and I’m not convinced they were laughing with the movie. Without spoiling things (because in many ways: seeing is believing) it felt like the movie was rewritten, replanned during production. The last moments do not fit the earlier ones. There’s an impression that the writer/director was a bit star-struck, or had a chance to work with some names, and changed the screenplay. It was utterly baffling to me.
This is all tremendously negative so far. As a fan of science fiction, and of Asian cinema, I did enjoy a lot of it. Primarily the start of the movie. The blasted and devastated down is convincing. The vehicle stunts are impressive. Hoyeon’s character (Sung Ae) has one of the coolest action scene introductions. There are some charming moments that have great comedic timing. The early cinematography is excellent; warm, rich colours and great framing. The areas and locales feel grounded and genuine.
The science fiction here is much stronger than I had first realized. But I appreciate that as well. While it feels unwieldy and overlong, I still greatly value the originality. Watching the film knowing very little about the story is definitely a plus; I had no idea what was going on. Although to be honest… I still don’t. Do not do an image search for the movie. Not even for official posters (I found the least spoiler-y ones for this review)
Ultimately, it is a bit of a miss for me. If it ran shorter and snappier, if its ending wasn’t so bonkers, I would recommend it. As it is… I don’t see myself watching it again. Ambitious, absurd, flawed, original.
Additional marshmallows: It feels bad giving it this score.