Hope is set in the fictional town of Hope Harbor, where the streets are narrow, the buildings are low, and everyone knows everyone. And also, for some reason, everyone has a gun.
Yet even with all its quirks, nothing about Hope Harbor feels as unsettling as the day a mysterious creature shows up and starts terrorizing the town.
It all started when police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) was called by locals about a cow with strange claw wounds on its body. With most of the police reinforcements away fighting a wildfire, he was alone in the small town, so he enlisted a local named Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) to investigate what they thought was a “tiger” from Russia.
But later in the village, Bum-seok saw unusually large holes in buildings, cars burning, and people wounded on the street. Perhaps whatever did this to the cow wasn’t a tiger after all. Perhaps it was something bigger, something more vicious than a feline. So the first thing he does, as any good public servant would, is grab his gun and chase the supposed beast away. He just doesn’t realize yet that the thing he’s chasing isn’t something you can stop with a gun.
The first time I heard about Hope, I immediately added it to my watchlist. Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing left a strong impression on me, and to this day it remains one of South Korea’s best horror films I’ve ever seen. So when I learned he was behind another “horror” project, I was instantly on board. I was excited. From what it looked like then, he was going back to the same creepy, weird, and unexplainable vein that made The Wailing so great.
That sense of mystery is exactly what the film leans into heavily for the first hour. I find it very patient, arguably to a fault, in introducing us to the monster at the heart of the story. For a huge chunk of its runtime, it dives deeper into what these creatures are, why they are here, and how they got here.
If you can sit through all those explanations and explorations, then Hope will offer you a jolly and thrilling good time. Because once all those questions are out of the way, this film will entertain you with some exhilarating action sequences that blend breakneck car chases and horseback pursuits. There’s even a moment I could only describe as a Jackie Chan homage, and it definitely garnered a lot of reaction from the crowd.
As for the acting department, a small and solid cast carried this film, led by Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, and Jung Ho-yeon. Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender are also part of the cast here, but they are mostly covered in CGI. I actually only just realized it was them about half an hour after they were introduced.
Speaking of the CGI, that’s probably the only thing holding this back from being truly great. To be fair, there are moments when it is convincing, like when people are thrown around. But when it focuses on the creature, I couldn’t help but feel like this is a rather incomplete render. It is a bummer, because the main selling point of the film is the monster, yet they all feel elastic, out-of-place, as if they might glitch out at any moment.
For me, it’s either you hate Hope or you love Hope. The CGI takes some fun away because it is crappy. But there are also moments when this film just works as an entertaining sci-fi film. I guess it all boils down to how much you can ignore and forgive in a film. And if you are like me, a bit forgiving, then there’s plenty to enjoy here.
3.5/5
Now showing in cinemas.