Hope (2026)
At nearly two hours and 40 minutes, Hope, South Korea's new science fiction/creature feature/action thriller epic, is a work of often dizzying ingenuity, energy, and "what the hell were they thinking" head-scratching. It's awe-inspiring, overlong, thrilling, and occasionally incoherent. In short: This hot mess of a movie is absolutely worth seeing.
The film opens on the small South Korean town of Hope Harbor, where local police chief Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) is investigating the mutilation of a cattle by some unidentified predator. While Bum-seok and rookie cop Im Sung-ae (Jung Ho-yeon) lead the hunt for this elusive predator in the streets of increasingly ravished Hope Harbor, his cousin Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) and a band of fellow hunters embark on a journey into the nearby woods where the creature-in-question may or may not have emerged from.
Hope's blend of post-apocalyptic action and old-school creature feature tension makes for a truly exciting and thrilling-off-the-top movie experience, particularly in its first hour. The film wisely builds tension by delaying any glimpses of the film's central monster à la Jaws or 2007's Cloverfield. Just as the film's game of creature peak-a-boo could stretch credulity too far, Hope reveals its monster and, well—this will likely be the inflection point for many audience members about how willing they are to ride the film's weird wavelength.
The film's CGI is, in short, terrible and something more akin to an early 2000s video game or anime than what you would expect from the highest-budgeted Korean film to date. I ultimately found the monster's crunchy edges charming, if a bit distracting, but I imagine the effects will likely take some audiences out of the movie completely.
A third-act highway chase is as thrilling and absurd a sequence as you are likely to see in theaters all year. However, there's no denying that the film is just too long, particularly in its climax, which adds creature backstory that often feels impenetrable and unnecessary.
That being said, Hope is still
something to behold—a truly wild, weird, and exhilaratingly original vision, flaws
and all.
