Director: Na Hong-jin
Writer: Na Hong-jin
Stars: Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Hoyeon
Synopsis: A mysterious discovery is made on the outskirts of the remote harbor town. The residents find themselves in a desperate fight for survival against something they have never encountered before.
Let me cut to the chase, Hope kicks extreme ass. If you know nothing before going in (like I did), take the first sentence, close this review, and get tickets when the film comes out. Hope starts as something small and completely unravels into the most nerve thumping and jaw ripping a movie can get. By the time the hefty two and a half plus hours run past, you are itching for more and the open ending leaves an entire freight train of narrative to go. It isn’t without its issues, and you shouldn’t go in expecting something layered or complex. But if you are missing radical and absurd filmmaking, you will get that in droves with Na Hong-jin’s newest feature, Hope.
Hope follows an incident in a port town named Hope Harbor where a violently sliced cow appears in the middle of the road. The local police chief, Go Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min), sets off to investigate along with a group of local hunters, which includes the police chief’s extended cousin – Go Sung-ki (Zo In-sung). The film escalates from there as an investigative thriller, then a hide-and-seek style horror film, then a creature feature, then into a massive sci-fi picture. By the end of the film you are on the verge of a nearly apocalyptic situation (?) Whaaaaaaaaaaat – what are the townsfolk of Hope going to do about this?
The evolution in narrative and theme is a slow press on the gas until we get to the final moment and is done so with masterful precision. While you are given a lot of time in this cinematic world, you are given adequate time to accustom yourself to these characters and world and not a single moment feels wasted. You get a world that feels lived in, characters that know each other, and events that genuinely feel like they’ll impact these characters as if they’re real people. That may seem like the bare minimum, but with everything else going on the fine balance is what makes this even more impressive. Most films would crumble under the weight of this narrative, but the control behind the camera ensures this film doesn’t become entirely muddled and lost.
If you missed the campiness of something like Transformers, then you’ll be right at home here. In some of the most violent or should-be-serious moments you see these folks squabble or say the most nonsensical things – and it’s incredible. Rookie cop Lim Sung-ae (played by Hoyeon from season 1 of Squid Game) comes into every scene like a complete badass just blowing things up without an ounce of fear in her blood. The thrill factor comes and goes in Hope but when it’s firing off it is firing off. As if the thrill factor is staring at you at a stop light, revving and waiting for the light to turn green. Hope is completely batsh*t and is worth your valuable time.
While I do greatly enjoy this film, there are some parts that bog it down. It feels counterproductive to discuss the quality of CGI, but at times the creatures look like they’re straight out of a PlayStation 3 game. Since it’s in the trailer, the first creature that’s encountered looks like the Labyrinth Madman enemy from Bloodborne (if you played Bloodborne, you know those things are scary as hell!). Then it devolves into creatures that look monstrously campy, or like the demogorgon from Stranger Things. The juxtaposition of the human characters undergoing the trials and pains they’re facing and it being done at the hands of silly looking creatures sort of sucks the intensity out of the scene.
With that said, there are moments where the stunts bring the intensity into view – a scene involving the lights on the top of a cop car comes to mind where I sat there with my heart in my stomach. Hope asks the viewer to suspend their sense of belief a great deal at times but the reward for doing so is oh so sweet. In a consequential scene a character is telling a story about how much worse the situation at hand really is, while simultaneously talking about holding in his poop. It is by design that Hope is a little overly silly, and it doesn’t fit into some scenes that are meant to be more dour. But in the face of what Hope gets right, these issues melt away.
With the summer blockbuster season coming to an end, there’s no better way to cap it off than with a little Hope. Violence, explosions, weird looking creatures, crazy stunts – all things that feed this simple minded soul. The sequel this ending promises is only going to get bigger, crazier, and hopefully more violent. Plus, the post credits scene? C’mon, just total batsh*t insanity. You will not want to miss Hope.
