Hope Review: South Korea’s Most Expensive Movie Falls Flat

Images courtesy of Madman Entertainment.

Na Hong-Jin’s first film in a decade is a three hour long sci-fi epic that is anything but.  

Hope is a sci-fi creature feature that follows police officer Ko Bum-Seok (Hwang Jung-min) in his attempts to save a small rural town near the Korean DMZ from a mysterious monster wreaking havoc. The film draws the viewer in with a very strong first act full of intrigue and mystery surrounding the cause as Bum-Seok explores the wreckage of the town, but the quality of the film immediately declines once he actually finds the monster. It turns from an enticing and mysterious thriller into a dime-a-dozen action movie that lacks identity, as well as suffering from some major pacing issues. The film’s choice to continuously cut between different characters and different areas of the village does make the world feel lived in and gives a sense of breadth and scale, however it effectively kills any momentum that Na Hong-Jin had built up in any of the previous scenes.

A strong part of Hope’s marketing positioned the film as the biggest budget film to come out of Korea ever, with a budget of $70 million AUD. This is not reflected in the visuals of the film, in either its cinematography or its visual effects. The film looks very crisp and sharp but lacks a distinct visual direction. The visual effects look tacky and bad, with the poor quality VFX undermining the monster’s first appearance that the film spends the entire first act hyping up. When more alien monsters appear, there is no visual consistency between them, making them look like they were carelessly designed with no consideration to a cultivated aesthetic.

When taking into account Hope’s uninteresting plot, stretched out pacing, bland visuals and long runtime, it’s easy to see how an otherwise interesting idea is turned into a gruelling experience that I struggled to stay awake in. The film overall feels like a poor attempt at recreating the vibe of Michael Bay, but despite the film’s many action set pieces, very few of them capture the mid 2000’s “Bayhem” that it tries so hard to emulate.

Hope is a lot of things. It’s a mystery film, it’s a sci-fi flick, it’s an action movie, it’s a dark comedy and it’s a police procedural. It is not, however, a good movie.

Hope opens in cinemas September 10th. For tickets and more info, click here.

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