A still from “Hope” (Photo – Neon)
Hope, a new film from South Korea written and directed by Na Hong-jin, seems to ask the viewer if a movie can get by on energy alone.
Hope
Directed by Na Hong-jin – 2026
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
It begins with hunters finding a donkey butchered by some animal with deep claws, and right away we know we’re in Predator territory.
The perpetrator is from outer space, which the viewer can pretty much guess. The information is divulged on screen after a village is torn apart by an unseen force strong enough to send a car flying through the air. When the monster, the first of four, appears, it is ten feet tall, with dreadlocks, muscle, speed, and is virtually unkillable. This happens almost an hour in.
Hope is just getting started. There are plenty more shooting and chase scenes amid tracking shots down alleyways and narrow streets. There are people running or driving away from fast-moving aliens; hunters are being hunted. There are aliens in trees, or crashing through trees. (I must say, there are some beautiful forest shots.) Stunt work involving a galloping horse and a high-speed car is pretty remarkable to watch. Did I mention an alien autopsy done with a chainsaw? The movie even has time, two hours and forty minutes, to work in some humor.
I don’t know if it all makes sense. I never learned if the alien spacecraft had crashed or landed, or how another alien craft is shot down. Did the aliens want to invade for the heck of it, for territory, or are they trying to get back to and/or restore a spooky-looking dead alien baby that appears to be the love child of a heavily antlered Alicia Vikander and a bulky Michael Fassbender? They both played robots in previous movies and are now aliens, their faces digitally inserted into foreign bodies. I suppose that’s a step up on the evolutionary stage.
I didn’t understand what the movie’s title, Hope, meant, except that there is a HOPE REAL ESTATE sign spotted early on in the film. So maybe that means hope is about defending your planet, or something like that.
There is a mention of minefields early in the movie, which is perhaps a reference to the tension between North and South Korea. Just as a sign that reads PROTECT THE NATION FROM INFILTRATION could be a reference to border tensions, water quality, or alien incursion.
As an old monster-movie buff, I suppose I couldn’t let the summer go by without seeing a monster flick, though the genre has altered in recent years to follow the blueprint of James Cameron’s Aliens: monsters, but plenty of firepower too. If more bangs for the buck is the blueprint, Hope has got that covered. So I guess the movie does make it on energy alone, but barely.
> Playing at Landmark Theatres Pasadena, Regal Paseo, Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, and AMC Santa Anita 16.
Your distinction between the energy of the chase scenes and the uncertainty about the aliens’ motives makes the central question of the review clear. The examples of the horse-and-car stunt and the forest photography also show why you still found things to appreciate. It is useful to know where the spectacle carries the film and where the story leaves you wanting more.