“Oh shit. This just went to hell.”
Story: You know all those stories about a sleepy little town that has a police force that never really sees any action? The one that suddenly has a rash of murders they need to solve, and quickly, as the town is slowly starting to crumble from the destruction in these murderer’s wake? Yep, poor police chief Ko Bum-seok finds himself in this position, and he’s definitely not happy about it. As he and his force – okay fine, basically just rookie Im Sung-ae who’s somehow loaded for bear – try to stop what’s happening, things really get crazy. Like, huge monsterous creatures crazy. What’s going on? Why is it happening to Our Little Town? And what is his cousin doing trying to “help”?
Genre I’d put it in: What Was That Stories
Release Date: 2026
Remake, Sequel, Based-On, or Original: Original, but with vibes from films like The Host, Attack the Block, and lots of Kaiju/alien films because why not.
Animals okay?: Not in any way, shape, or form. And there’s close-ups of the aftermath.
Special Shout-out: Lee Sang-hee as the hilariously overtaxed Ahn Nak-yeon. His terrified-yet-stubborn banter with Hwang’s Bum-seok is pitch-perfect, blending terror with slapstick in a way I live for in Asian cinema. He’s absolutely incredible.
Gotta say: Before we get started here, I just need to say that Hope does not suck. But it does fail in that it seems to promise one thing, then switches stories more than halfway thorough. While films like From Dusk Til Dawn (spoilers for a 30 year old film I guess) do that seamlessly, making it a glorious genre change? Hope feels clunky and listless, as if producers said “yeah, I guess they should be aliens, right?” That passionless shift feels like a record scratch rather than the start of the really good stuff. And in that way, Hope fails.
But damn does this cast do more than their best. As our intrepid foursome Ko Bum-seok, Ko Sung-ki, Ahn Nak-yeon and Im Sung-ae, Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Lee Sang-hee, and the glorious Hoyeon successfully bumble their way toward success. Having these characters discover their inner badass – by messing up a whole lot – is part of the delicious tension that makes the first half of the film feel like a gory roller-coaster ride.
You want gore? Oh honey, you’ve got it. From the first scene that shows an almost eviscerated cow in the middle of a country road, to people being torn in half, it’s all here. The first creature looks like the mother-creature from Barbarian, and while the CGI is iffy at best (sometimes the thing looks like the kind of clip-art straight from Birdemic), there’s a horrific realization that there might be something nefarious afoot in the scientific community. Don’t worry; there isn’t.
The second half falters once the creatures are shown to be aliens. Aliens? Oh, okay, I can roll with that. That the first one looks like the mother-creature from Barbarian was wild (even though the CGI felt like Birdemic-era clip-art when that thing was running.) BTW, each alien looks different and can change into other versions, making keeping who’s who almost impossible during breakneck action sequences? My brain hurts, and it’s so very little. Be kind to it please. Then towards the end, we’re supposed to empathize with the aliens? Okay, I can see that if it was telegraphed a bit. But it’s not, so I don’t. Not even if said aliens are voiced by Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander.
What starts off as a rollicking horror actioner turns into a story that feels like the writers forgot what it was supposed to be about, and shoehorned in stuff at the end. The first half of Hope is absolutely amazing. The actors pull out all the stops, making even the craziest moments believable. Writer/director Na-Hong-jin has a way with blending action, horror, and comedic beats perfectly. But when the film shifts into an alien POV, the film lost me. Hope got so close, so very close. Then whiffed it at the finish line.
But if you go? Do stay ’til the post-credits scene for a satisfying, and kinda hilarious, tidbit.
#Protip: Hope marks the first time Fassbender and Vikander have worked together since 2016’s The Light Between Oceans. Get these two amazing performers on screen together more often! Unless all that talent would cause a singularity of awesomeness. Then fine. I guess I can wait another ten years ’til the end of life as we know it.
