Set along the DMZ in the South Korean border town of Hope Harbor, Hope departs from other great films of its ilk, like Bong Joon Ho\u2019s The Host<\/a>, by picking a rural setting. Police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) and various gun-toting locals are called to investigate a bull carcass in the middle of an open road, with claw marks far too big for the local bears, but before they have a chance to dig into the mystery, carnage begins engulfing their nearby township. This thrusts them into utter chaos for nearly the film\u2019s first full hour as they chase down an unseen monster while navigating bodies, debris, and cars sent tumbling from off-screen in scenes that alternate between the dizzying terrors of director Na Hong-jin\u2019s last film, The Wailing<\/a>, and something out of William Friedkin\u2019s The French Connection<\/a>, with cameras low to the ground as they zip around tight turns.<\/p>\n While we do eventually see the aforementioned creature \u2013 one of several that appear across the movie\u2019s 160 minutes, played via performance capture by Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, Cameron Britton, and Taylor Russell \u2014 this initial, extended set piece provides enough heart-in-mouth thrills that you might even wish the monsters remained unseen. Granted, this might also be the case if you\u2019re averse to malformed CGI, but the standards once set by Hollywood aren\u2019t the same everywhere else. The way Na Hong-jin uses his digital tools, as though bringing impossible stop-motion critters to life, makes for a marvellous romp. The characters are largely paper-thin cutouts, but they provide enough levity and allure to keep things moving. For instance, there\u2019s Squid Game mainstay Jung Ho-yeon, who plays rookie cop Sung-ae and gets a heroic, grenade launcher-wielding entrance akin to a South Indian action star.<\/p>\n To say that Hope is an alien film isn\u2019t exactly a spoiler, but discovering the nature of its designs is a delight unto itself. Usually, one look at a movie\u2019s extraterrestrials tells you just how close or far removed its designs are meant to be from humanity, but Hope also features a variety of creatures that make this calculus more complicated. Some of these aliens are elegant, even regal; others are puzzling creations of flesh, bone, and even wood, where you\u2019re never quite sure what you\u2019re looking at (anatomically speaking). Still others feel plucked from the sketchbooks of H.R. Giger, but for the most part, they have just enough human features to place them in the uncanny valley, which isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing given how they\u2019re used dramatically.<\/p>\n The movie\u2019s most heroic characters \u2013 like Zo In-sung\u2019s headstrong, horse riding tracker, Sung-ki \u2013 aren\u2019t those that land the most accurate shots, but rather those that occasionally pause to consider the lives and emotions of these rampaging creatures, catching glimmers of something deeper in their distinctly human eyes. On paper, Hope is entirely a game of figuring out what the f*** the townspeople are even up against, and responding accordingly. But nestled within its action, comedy, and mystery are fleeting moments of empathy that verge on heartbreak for the situation at large, as the movie threatens to become something more sentimental and Amblin-esque.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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