'Hope': Can it be the future of Korean sci-fi? [Review]

A still from the film "Hope" [Plus M Entertainment, Forged Films]

"Hope" has its origins a decade ago — what director Na Hong-jin once described as the moment "dark clouds were just beginning to roll in from beyond the mountains." The story, which lifts entirely off the ground and stretches into another dimension, took the better part of ten years to reach the screen. A film that wanted to speak about hope now arrives in the summer of 2026 as a genuine hope for Korean cinema itself, an industry that has spent recent years trapped in those very same dark clouds.

"I suddenly wonder why all this pressure is on me. It's an enormous burden," Na said, with characteristic candor — followed immediately by: "Still, I have to try to do at least one more thing." That sense of responsibility captures the weight the film carries.

Even setting aside the current state of the Korean film industry, "Hope" was always destined to be one of the most anticipated releases in recent memory. It is Na's first feature since "The Wailing" (2016), produced on the largest budget in Korean cinema history, and starring Hwang Jung-min, Jo In-sung and Jung Ho-yeon. The wait proves worthwhile across 156 minutes that are breathless, pulse-quickening and relentlessly propulsive — yet not entirely satisfying in the way a conventional blockbuster would be. That lingering unease is pure Na Hong-jin. If anyone asks where the hope for Korean science fiction lies, the answer is "Hope."

The film is set in Hopohang, a fictional village in the demilitarized zone. Branch office chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) responds after local youths report finding a cow dead in the middle of a field, killed by an unidentified attacker. Confronted with strange claw marks, Bum-seok and Seong-gi (Jo In-sung), along with the other village men, instinctively assume a tiger is responsible. Bum-seok races to protect the village, frantically working his radio as he goes. But when he arrives, the scene before him defies imagination — the village is in ruins, residents' bodies are strewn along the roads, and an unearthly shriek fills the air. He grabs his gun and runs, chasing something he can no longer even name.

While Bum-seok heads into the village, Seong-gi and his group push into the forest, where they encounter their own horror: a barn littered with slaughtered cattle and a human arm, bitten off and hanging from a tree. As Seong-gi's group follows the trail of destruction deeper into the woods, Bum-seok moves through the village finding survivors — only to lose them again, one by one — and slowly closes in on the truth. The moment he confirms the attacker is not a tiger but an indescribable creature the color of mixed beans, Hopohang officer Seong-ae (Jung Ho-yeon) appears in a dramatic rescue, saving him from near-certain death.

Bum-seok and Seong-ae give chase without mercy. But they soon discover something even more chilling: there is more than one creature targeting the village. Seong-gi's group, deep in the forest, comes face to face with the others. Where did these creatures come from, and what are they? Can Bum-seok, Seong-ae and Seong-gi's group hold the village against a terror that seems to have no end?

The film sprints through its opening hour without pause. It is time spent chasing the unknown alongside Bum-seok — tearing down alleys where anything could leap out, hammering a police car through the chaos — and the momentum never lets up. Cars fly. People fly. The target is unclear, but the pursuit and the flight are both reckless and thrilling.

Densely choreographed car chases and explosive gunfight sequences accumulate enough kinetic energy to carry the remaining ninety minutes. The back half delivers an action sequence that begins in the forest and spills onto a highway, as well as fierce, committed performances from the cast fighting for their lives inside the cramped confines of a police car.

The creature's full form is revealed roughly a third of the way through. That it is an alien is something of an open secret. Its appearance — somewhere between human and extraterrestrial — is not especially unfamiliar. The CG shortcomings that several critics flagged at the Cannes Film Festival world premiere are not particularly distracting here. Na explained that the Cannes cut was submitted before post-production was complete, and that he spent roughly a month afterward finishing the work. The alien's strangeness may unsettle, but it rarely breaks narrative immersion.

From the midpoint on, the film cuts between the desperate humans and the expressions of the aliens they face, and the creatures' reasons for attacking Hopohang begin to take shape. The emotional performances delivered by Hollywood actors Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell and Cameron Britton as the aliens feel somewhat unfamiliar at first. But given that a sequel would almost certainly place these characters at the center of the story, the casting makes sense as a long-term investment.

If the spine of the narrative is a relentless chase, the film's message is quietly embedded in the choices each character makes along the way. As with all of Na's work, "Hope" is built on the question of good and evil.

Seong-ae, played by Jung, is the film's most straightforward character. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and anyone who attacks others is the villain. She acts on clear moral instinct. Bum-seok is not so different — he knows his duty as branch chief is to protect the village, and he knows he must act. Whether he has the nerve to do so is another matter. Yet when he fires at what he believes is a monster, only to discover it was a friend, calling that act "evil" feels somehow wrong.

The villagers' brutal deaths make the aliens seem like the obvious villains — until a character named Yang-bae (Eum Moon-suk) appears and his own atrocities come to light, blurring the line between alien, invasion and evil. Is destruction alone enough to make something evil? Can a harmful act committed without malice truly be called evil? In depicting a tragedy born of mutual incomprehension between insiders and outsiders, "Hope" faintly echoes "The Wailing," where the arrival of a strange outsider set every catastrophe in motion. The film delivers its crowd-pleasing thrills, then quietly leaves behind an inexplicable guilt.

Na's leap from the supernatural to the cosmic is strange and exhilarating. There are aliens, but there is also sharp humor and rousing action. As a cinematic experience, "Hope" offers plenty to enjoy. The long-held belief that "Korean sci-fi is doomed" has weighed on the genre for years. But if this film — which blends action, wit and genuine thematic weight in equal measure — can crack that assumption, then "Hope" may be more than a title. It may be a declaration of intent for Korean science fiction as a whole. Opens Wednesday. Rated for ages 15 and older.

balme@heraldcorp.com