Hope
Written by Cameron Geiser
Whoa… now this is how you start a rollicking Film Festival. Written and directed by Na Hong-jin (whose earlier, stellar, film The Wailing was my only experience with the Korean director until now) Hope is a sci-fi action thriller with elements of horror sprinkled in for good measure. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because Hope does indeed do a lot with its two-hour-and-thirty-six minute runtime. It opens on the local police captain (Hwang Jung-min) of a small seaside town investigating a call from local hunters, one of them being his cousin (Zo In-sung), about a mysteriously mauled dead ox blocking a small road. After they determine it might have been a tiger spotted recently coming down from the mountains, they split up to track it down before it does too much damage to the townsfolk.
It isn’t long before our intrepid police captain sees and then hears evidence of something far worse than a tiger besieging the town. What follows is a masterclass of maintaining high-level tension and a fast-paced momentum that keeps you guessing as to what could possibly be ransacking the town in such a violent fashion given the sights we see left in its wake. Buildings destroyed, cars flipped and thrown through the air, and horrific deaths of the citizens he knows personally. Hope excels in hiding the threat from sight for a long time, but we do eventually lay eyes on the gigantic human-like green Alien rampaging through the quiet village. This sequence is filled with heart-pounding car chases and vicious gunplay as the two local cops work with a smattering of citizens in combating and chasing this gangly gargantuan across the village. And while Hoyeon may be on the poster and all over the marketing, she’s not the lead but she earns every second of her time onscreen as the only other officer left in town alongside the captain.
Meanwhile, the police captain’s cousin and the other hunters headed into the mountainous forest to track that tiger, unaware of the larger threat lurking nearby. Cutting between both groups as they each learn more about their predicament builds the anticipation but it can get a little clunky and unwieldy at times. Luckily, this film oozes style and very solid character work that smooths out any rougher edges the film has. Speaking of good character work, did I mention that the film is also just damn funny? The setting of a small seaside town has its benefits, like a cast of quirky characters that stand out in their eccentricities and quirks, like the old archer that the police captain runs into when chasing the unknown threat through the city streets. Together they advance and pursue the monster while bickering back and forth, clearly terrified, it’s a terrific dynamic. The whole film is littered with smaller roles that use their time onscreen brilliantly.
Hope is one of the crazier action films of 2026; take from that what you will.
The first half of the film is definitely the stronger portion, but the remainder keeps things interesting as more and more information is gathered regarding the monstrous interloper. The last thirty minutes of the film have a couple of smaller issues that aren’t detrimental to the quality of the film overall but they keep it from ascending to a higher score. The first is that when the alien threat is shown onscreen they are terrifyingly fast, but when our heroes are on horses fleeing through the forest from an alien threat that should clearly catch up with them before each cut in the edit takes place- well, it’s nothing bad per se, it just breaks immersion. Then there’s the last five minutes of the film (or so) where it feels like the scripts changed from a different film, which didn’t feel alarming as much as it felt like whiplash with a bizarre ending that decides to shovel unconnected alien lore into the plot at the last second. I’m not sure if this was meant as a nod towards the potential of a sequel, or if it was just meant to be something to humanize the alien threat, which feels out of place after seeing them depicted as monstrous beings for over two hours. Though to be fair there were a number of clues hinting at the fact that they might be more similar to us than we might think. Either way, I’m not mad at the idea of a sequel, but next time maybe a tight hour and forty five minutes. There’s an immaculate hour-and-fifty minute film here, but instead we got a pretty great two-hours-and-forty minutes. Check it out!
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.