By Ben Wright (@Iamzavagno | www.xgeeks.co.uk)
This review is spoiler-free.
The first teaser for Hope had me instantly interested, and I wasn’t about to let a limited cinema release stop me from experiencing this on the big screen. I was actually really pleased to see a near-full cinema for the screening too, because it shows there is an audience for these kinds of films. Add in the Cannes competition selection and the anticipation surrounding Na Hong-jin’s first film in a decade, and there was a lot of talk around Hope before it even arrived.
The first half of this movie is simply incredible. It’s one of the strongest openings to a film you could hope for, no pun intended. The tension, the suspense and, most importantly, the decision not to reveal exactly what is terrorising this town for so long was absolutely the right choice. You see the aftermath of what’s happening before you really understand what is happening, and that makes every mutilated body, destroyed building and strange noise feel so much more unsettling. The pacing during this first act is relentless, while the production design and practical effects do a fantastic job of making Hope feel like a real, lived-in place rather than a movie set. You genuinely get a sense of the size and scale of the horror unfolding around these people.
Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung and Jung Ho-yeon are fantastic as the three central characters, and each brings something very different to the chaos. Hwang’s police chief Beom-seok is a great character to follow, particularly as he’s very much an ordinary guy being thrown into an increasingly extraordinary situation. Zo In-sung’s Sung-ki has one hell of a journey, while Jung Ho-yeon’s Sung-ae is an absolute force of nature. Her entrance is one of the most badass moments in the film, and she completely owns every scene she’s in. The supporting cast also gives the town plenty of personality, with a whole collection of colourful characters who make the chaos feel even more unpredictable.
There’s plenty of humour mixed in with the carnage as well, and thankfully most of it lands. Hope can go from genuinely tense to completely ridiculous within the space of a few minutes, and that worked for me. There were several moments where the cinema was laughing while the film was simultaneously throwing increasingly horrific situations at the characters. It’s a strange mixture, but it fits the film’s completely bonkers tone.
The camera work throughout is incredible, particularly once the action really kicks off. The car chases are fantastic, the destruction feels huge and there are some brilliant tracking shots that make everything feel much more chaotic than a standard creature feature. There’s also something wonderfully old-school about the way the horses are used during some of the action, particularly in a film that is otherwise dealing with such a bizarre sci-fi threat. There’s a lot packed into this movie and, visually, it certainly gives you plenty to look at.
The creature designs are really interesting too. The first proper reveal is genuinely unsettling, partly because of the way it moves. There’s something slightly off about its speed and movement, almost as though it’s always a fraction of a beat out of sync with what your brain expects, and that made it even more uncomfortable to watch. Unfortunately, some of the CGI isn’t quite at the same level as the rest of the production. There are moments where the digital effects look noticeably less convincing, which is a shame when so much of the practical work and set design looks fantastic.
The biggest problem for me is the runtime. At around two and a half hours, Hope is roughly 40 minutes longer than I think it needed to be. It’s not that there’s loads of pointless filler, because there is always something happening, but the film doesn’t always get to its next major plot point as quickly as it could. It almost starts walking towards the next act at a leisurely pace, which feels strange after that absolutely sublime opening hour. The first half had me completely locked in, whereas the middle section made me much more aware of how long I had left to go.
And then there’s that ending.
I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it.
Without getting into spoilers, the final act suddenly drops you into a whole load of new lore and exposition that completely changes the direction of the movie. I understand what Na Hong-jin is attempting to do, and I actually appreciate that the film is willing to take such a massive swing, but I found myself sitting there thinking, “Wait, what?” There’s very little in the earlier part of the film to give you a reference point for this sudden left turn, so it becomes difficult to know exactly how you’re supposed to process everything being thrown at you. It’s absolutely going to divide audiences, and even now I’m still somewhere in the middle myself.
That’s frustrating because there is so much here that I loved. If the film had maintained the incredible pacing of that first half, trimmed some of the runtime and perhaps tweaked a few elements of the final act, I genuinely think Hope could have been in the conversation for my film of the year. The performances are great, the production design is fantastic, the action is huge, the cinematography is on another level and there are some genuinely memorable creature moments. Even when the film started losing me a little, I was still impressed by how much it was willing to throw at the screen.
Hope is an ambitious and incredibly entertaining creature feature, with a fantastic opening act, brilliant performances, phenomenal cinematography and some genuinely jaw-dropping action. The overlong runtime, inconsistent CGI and divisive final act hold it back from reaching the greater heights it occasionally threatens to hit, but there’s still an awful lot to admire here.
