Hope (15)

Hope Harbor's beleaguered police chief Bum-seok responds to a call from local hunter Ko Sung-ki about dead livestock in the middle of a road. A quick examination of the eviscerated animal reveals deep claw marks, which are initially attributed to a tiger. Sung-ki and friends head to nearby woods to stalk and kill the big cat. The police chief drives back into his village and witnesses the true cause of the cattle's grisly demise: a powerful and seemingly indestructible humanoid.

LondonNet Film Review

Hope (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Appearances are deliberately deceptive in the most expensive film shot in Korea. Punctuated by protracted and breathlessly staged action set pieces that reduce entire villages to rubble and twisted metal strewn with mangled human corpses, Hope imagines hellish first contact with alien visitors in a quaint village nestled close to the demilitarised zone separating the north and south. Writer-director Na Hong-jin slyly defies expectations with tried and tested genre tropes in a bloodthirsty battle royale between puny humans and otherworldly warriors reminiscent of the Predator and Transformers films…

Hope Harbor’s beleaguered police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) responds to a call from local hunter Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) about dead livestock in the middle of a road. A quick examination of the eviscerated animal reveals deep claw marks, which are initially attributed to a tiger. Sung-ki and friends head to nearby woods to stalk and kill the big cat to prevent further loss of life. “When nature called, she yelled,” pithily observes Bum-seok. The police chief drives back into his village and witnesses the true cause of the cattle’s grisly demise: a powerful and seemingly indestructible humanoid intent on killing every human in its path. Bum-seok joins forces with one of the few survivors of the rampage, retired colonel Ahn Nak-yeon (Lee Sang-hee), and calls in reinforcements from trigger-happy rookie police officer Sung-ae (Hoyeon) to neutralise the threat.

Socially awkward carpenter Yang-bae (Eum Moon-suk) provides shocking evidence that the monster may originate from another planet and it is not alone. The woods where Sung-ki and co have ventured may be home to four more creatures, J’aur (Alicia Vikander), Ai’dovor (Taylor Russell), Ma’veyyo (Michael Fassbender) and Va’migere (Cameron Britton).

Hope seems an ironic title for an impressively staged demonstration of widescale carnage that delights in slow-motion close-ups of hapless homo sapiens being squashed, impaled and tossed through the air like rag dolls. Hong-jin choreographs jaw-dropping set-pieces with delirious aplomb, including a nerve-jangling sprint through labyrinthine village alleyways that provides more than one jump scare.

Hong-jin’s increasingly unhinged script balances bombastic thrills with off-kilter comedy, painting Bum-seok as a sunglass-clad buffoon who survives by good fortune rather than skill. He’s the exasperated butt of several droll jokes. A glaring absence of nuanced character detail is frustrating and, presumably, deliberate to allow the filmmaker to perform a narrative rug pull in the final 15 minutes that clearly tees up a sequel. With a running time just over two-and-a-half hours, Hope could be tightened in the opening hour and Hong-jin’s artistic ambitions occasionally exceed the grasp of the armies of animators in charge of seamlessly melding digitally rendered beasts and live action elements. You can see the joins in the slam-bang spectacle.

– Kim Hu