Hope (dir. Na Hong-Jin)

by Jack Martin | Sep 26, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 157 mins

UK Distributor: Picturehouse Entertainment

UK Release Date: 25 September 2026

WHO’S IN HOPE?

Hwang Jung-Min, Zo In-Sung, Jung Ho-Yeon aka Hoyeon, Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, Eum Moon-Suk, Lee Sang-Hee, Im Hyun-Sik

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Na Hong-Jin (director, writer, producer), Kim Sae-Mi and Kim Sae-Rom (producers), Michael Abels (composer), Hong Kyung-Pyo (cinematographer), Kim Sum-Min (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

An alien creature wreaks havoc on a remote South Korean community…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON HOPE?

I am reminded of Morgan Freeman’s quotable line (one of many) in The Shawshank Redemption, which goes as follows: “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” Likewise, filmmaker Na Hong-Jin’s latest feature Hope is, indeed, both dangerous and maddening. Dangerous, in the sense that it goes for broke in its ambitious action set-pieces and high-concept sci-fi/fantasy plotting, to where it often threatens to veer far off course and out of control. Maddening, in the sense that despite all the ingredients for a real genre classic, they never fully come together to make a satisfying and coherent movie.

Nobody can deny that Na, a respected name in South Korean cinema thanks to genre offerings like The Yellow Sea and The Wailing, is lacking passion for his craft, as he takes a very simple B-movie premise and turns it into as much of an action spectacle as he can, which at times works in his favour. But the film itself, as entertaining as it initially seems, doesn’t have the substance required to warrant either its severely bloated runtime or its weird handling of various tones at once. It’s a strange mixed bag, which on the one hand you have fine respect for, but on the other just the most dumbfounded look of confusion across your bewildered and deeply frustrated face.

The film opens just outside the small, elderly-populated town of Hope Harbour, where police officer Ko Bum-Seok (Hwang Jung-Min) and his second cousin Ko Sung-Ki (Zo In-Sung) are called in to investigate the corpse of a cow in the middle of the road, which has been left with gaping scars all over its body. Initially believing the culprit to be a bear or even a tiger, Bum-Seok heads back into town to gather reserve support, while Sung-Ki and his fellow hunters head to the woods to tack the creature down. However, Bum-Seok is shocked to find the town drenched in destruction, something far bigger and more powerful than any bear or tiger having torn through entire buildings and squished people using anything it can throw or push, and soon he and rookie officer Im Sung-Ae (Jung Ho-Yeon, better known as simply Hoyeon) discover that the thing they’re chasing after is a wholly different creature than either of them could have predicted. Meanwhile, Sung-Ki and his gang make a monumental discovery about their destructive new foes, primarily the fact that they’re definitely not of Earth origin.

There are long stretches, particularly within the first hour, where Hope does actually seem to know what kind of movie it wants to be. It quickly settles into a fast-paced rhythm mixed with an even dose of heart-racing suspense and thrilling action, as we follow these cops on a high-speed pursuit throughout the destroyed town that feels like something Jerry Bruckheimer would have produced in the 90s or mid-2000s. Writer-director Na has a fine grip on the genre, with cars flipping over and swerving from side to side, and people performing some rather dangerous stunts (sometimes in those very cars) as if they’re in a Mad Max movie, while the actors stand around looking cool and uttering some badass one-liners that classic action heroes like Stallone or Schwarzenegger would have had a field day with back in their day. When it’s just focusing on those moments, the movie almost comes together.

But then, after a certain point, the film becomes weirdly stagnant, experimenting with all sorts of directions that start off not really working, and then proceed to really not work. It’s no secret that there is a major sci-fi element at its core, complete with spaceships that owe a huge stylistic debt to the Alien and Prometheus movies, while the aliens themselves are brought to life by effects which to say are cartoonish and hilariously cheap-looking would be an understatement (though the effects are somewhat forgivable, for what may seem like a large budget for a South Korean movie is mere peanuts for your average CG-heavy Hollywood blockbuster). However, the film doesn’t leave much space to develop that concept as much as it wants – which is saying something, because this movie is already stretched out to a two-and-a-half hour runtime, at least half-an-hour longer than it really needs to be – and proceeds to leave far too much information about these aliens, where they come from, what their mission is etc on the side in favour of increasingly repetitive action that does get a little dull after a while.

Furthermore, the overall tone of this movie is odd, because you can tell that it’s trying to be this big and bombastic action spectacle, but also this outlandish dark comedy where characters argue about moving bodies that they’ve just inadvertently shot at and deliver heavily detailed monologues about taking a dump in the woods. The mashing of these two tones creates an uneven feeling throughout as you’re never quite sure whether to take all this carnage seriously or to laugh along with it, which not only depletes much of the tension but also makes you feel less than you already did for characters who don’t have much depth to them beyond just the very basic action-movie archetypes. Confusing things even further are the film’s closing few minutes, when it seems as though another movie entirely has literally crash-landed into this one with plot points and stakes we never even knew existed until that moment, while it becomes clear as day that Na intends for there to be at least one more movie in this story, thus robbing the movie of its own ability to stand firmly as its own entity without the backup of (yet-to-be-made, let alone greenlit) direct sequels.

One does indeed hope that this movie gets some kind of follow-up, if only to give some kind of closure to this story and this universe. But just from seeing how much of a mixed bag it is, I’m not holding out much hope that the next one (if there is indeed one) will be much less dangerous and maddening.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Hope is a frustrating mixed bag of tones and genres which never quite come together, with filmmaker Na Hong-Jin following a strong action-centric first half with a confusing and overlong delve into sci-fi that doesn’t fully work.