Hope Review: A Monstrous Waste of Potential

As a critic, I long ago accepted that which films do and do not get a theatrical release is a decision process that lies far above my pay grade and I will only suffer sleepless nights if I ponder them too long.

These enigmas are doubly murky when it comes to the seemingly arbitrary path for international pictures to get on screens in the U.S. The only recent film I have a real grievance about is Tribeca 2025 selection The Square, an utterly transfixing romantic tragedy set in Pyongyang. If we had to get one South Korean feature receiving a major push for U.S. audiences this year, then why couldn’t it be that rather than Hope, a disjointed mess of a sci-fi creature feature seemingly hellbent on leaving audiences completely baffled and bored?

Maybe it’s getting a release – on IMAX, no less – on the basis of its highly deceptive first half hour, which is one of the most stunning slabs of action cinema this year. It’s a slow-burn chase scene that accelerates so incrementally that it’s hard to imagine the velocities it will reach. It begins with a dead bull in the road, discovered by a bunch of Korean rednecks led by the taciturn Sung-ki (Zo In-sung). They summon local police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) to investigate, and the resultant lengthy conversation about what could possibly have done this is an absurdist delight.

When the chief gets back to town, it becomes clear what was responsible for this seemingly impossible attack is now tearing through the town on a rampage, bulldozing through homes and businesses with unstoppable fury. The chief is always one step behind, or looking the wrong way, or just catching a glimpse of it in darkness, and this keeps going, and going, and going, and going, and going until it’s so far past the point of revelation that nothing would be worth the wait. 

Then the monster is revealed in a display of subpar CG animation that would have been embarrassing when The Scorpion King came out. And it only gets worse from there.

By “it,” I mean everything about Hope. It’s almost impossible to believe that this is the work of Na Hong-jin, a director who landed a double-whammy on the grimy crime drama with the one-two punch of The Chaser and The Yellow Sea, then revolutionized the idea of epic horror with The Wailing. It’s like watching a young Martin Scorsese churn out a Transformers sequel. Characters appear with no introduction and disappear for extended periods. The rednecks, ignored as a comedy aside for much of the film, are actually its backbone for its second half. In a classic case of plot armor, the exact toughness of the monsters is more variable than their speed, which has the consistency of a slasher chasing a final girl. That said, their pace is nothing on the logic-bending front compared to Sung-ki suffering from an extreme case of cartoon physics. The poverty of the digital effects is at least partially offset by some great stunt work, but there are enough handbrake turns to give Vin Diesel travel sickness, making the experience pass from thrilling through repetitive into eyeball-glazing.

The veneer of at least somewhat competent filmmaking cannot survive the totally nonsensical plotting that results in a third act reveal that is flat-out befuddling. Maybe Hope was intended as a successor to The Host, but instead it degenerates into an unholy chimera of Attack on Titan and A Quiet Place, frittering away all that early promise in a truly baffling denouement. A kind interpretation is that whatever subtext Na included was lost in translation. Sadly, one can only wish that the rest of the film got lost too.

Hope

2026, R, 156 min. Directed by Na Hong-jin. Starring Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Hoyeon, Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, Eum Moon-suk, Lee Sang-hee, Im Hyun-sik.

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

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