Hope (2026)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The latest South Korean genre-mixing epic, Hope springs from the creative mind of Na Hong-jin, whose last feature film was an excellent horror titled The Wailing, a full decade ago.

Police chief Bum-seok watches over Hope Harbor, a small rural village near the Demilitarized Zone. Called out by a cousin to investigate some mutilated cattle outside town, Bum-seok returns to discover his town under attack. Bodies of townspeople litter the bloody street and buildings lie in wreckage that could have come from a tornado. He follows its path through town, finding friends alive and dead alike, none of whom seem able to understand the sudden violence visited upon them. Yet every time he slows to take a breather, another explosion, crash, or scream pierces the atmosphere, spurring him on to its source.

This takes almost an hour, nearly half the film. And it's magnificent. Na's command of suspense and production design make it an absorbing story indeed, as we learn tidbits of the chief's life and of those around him even as we follow him into danger. Na makes sure we never know more than the hero, and even the cinematography rarely lets us see more than what Bum-seok can see. We weave amongst dense sets and dressing, always in disastrous mess, often splattered with blood, each shot of which could be frozen and dissected for more information than we need. With each new crime scene, we're left wondering what on earth could cause such calamity? And can we trust the townsfolk, some of whom are intentionally painted as antagonistic.

Bum-seok's journey through his suddenly, mysteriously apocalyptic town is paralleled, in the plot, by that of his cousin in the forested mountainside nearby. He and his hunting friends search for answers to their original question in the woods before coming across... well, let's just say an answer to the film's central question of who or what is slaughtering the countryside. If you have any interest in seeing this film, I strongly recommend that you go in cold. There are moments of the viewing experience that can only be earned through your ignorance. You've been warned. 

Suffice to say that, even when the direct cause of the chaos is revealed at the end of act one, it's not really explained until later. Long tracking shots (the cinematography is utterly magical and transportive here; I was gasping as much by the action as by how they pulled off some of these shots) force us ever further into a treacherous, violent landscape, still smoking from its destruction. My mind jockeyed between possibilities in various genres before this one solidified itself. And while the journey to that revelation is more than worth a screening, I have to confess some dissatisfaction with the film's climactic ending. After the big reveal halfway through, the film levels up into a frenzied action flick, centered around an extended car chase through the ruined town that had me consistently on the edge of my seat. This sequence, CGI and all, gives any action scene coming out of Hollywood a run for its money and then some.

Yet by the time I was finally starting to feel some action weariness, the film's climax started. While I won't spoil it here, I think it's important to convey that the ending is wildly unsatisfying to this viewer. It riffs on a classic Western structure, of course, but in its final moments, the film swings us around to its surprise antagonists' perspective in a bizarre and wholly unexpected way. Thus the film's B-plot -- what I think of as its adventurous creature feature half, led by the hunting party and their discovery -- overwhelms its A-plot -- the riveting action of Bum-seok trying to save his home -- and ends itself right on the cusp of what, really, seems to be a missing second half. Not that I could endure more of this after two and a half hours of continuous action.

I could have, instead, used a bit more of the film's heart. A fellow cop shows up who is miraculously trained in field hospitals, offering some help to our hero and having his back in a big way. A couple locals provide ominous foreshadowing about what they know and what they've seen. But we don't really get to know or care about any secondary or tertiary characters, and that causes the film to feel more forgettable than it should. Arguably there's some drama towards the end, hinging on our understanding of the antagonists, but I found it unwelcome and nonsensical. Arguably, it's meant to complicate our viewerly desire for revenge and equilibrium, but I'm not sure the screenplay provides enough for that to be a convincing rhetorical move. And after the first half of the film visually sets up Bum-seok as its unlikely hero, the second half withdraws from this, making him feel weak and afraid in disingenuous ways to the film itself.

I wonder if there's a reading of this film in which Na is undermining and reversing the typical Western tropes of a hometown hero fighting off invaders. Here, that's how things start, but certainly not how they end. Characters become greedy and bloodthirsty, almost monstrous themselves, devolving before our eyes and under pressure from the calamity unfolding around them. And by the end, we're invited to consider the perspective of the invaders instead as being more righteous. Or at least more entertaining, which may also be the point. If so, Na is a genius who should be slapped for not finishing his commentary here and instead seeming to point at the need for a continuation of the story.