Chaser (2008) is one of my favourite Korean films and I think The Wailing (2016) is incredible. I booked a ticket for Hope without knowing anything about the film so when I later learned that it was directed by Na Hong-jin, I was quite excited. When I saw it had a 3.3 on Letterboxd I was a bit worried, but still had hope. I shouldn’t have.
The main issue here is that this thing is just too long. I’m not one to judge a movie on its runtime, but this thing had no business being over two and a half hours. There just is not enough content in it, none of the characters or concepts are developed. Which is totally fine! This film is a fun ride, but it just needed to be cut down to its best moments. I thought the whole opening portion before the aliens are revealed was quite boring. And this is given the fact that I didn’t even know they were aliens! I was somewhat invested in finding out what the monster was going to be, but if you already saw the trailer then I can’t imagine how boring it would have been.
Speaking of the aliens, I just can’t get past how CGI they look. It really made me appreciate Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026) that much more. I was honestly surprised how bad the aliens looked in a lot of the scenes, to the point where I was thinking that this might just be a Korean audience thing. Bong Joon Ho’s The Host (2006) was similar for me. The CGI was just so horrendous that I couldn’t take any of it seriously. However, when watching The Host I assumed it was because it came out in 2006, but twenty years later and Hope is in the same boat.
Another thing that didn’t work for me in this movie was any of the humor. I absolutely love Memories of Murder (2003). The humor in that film is one of the things that I think make it special. I felt like Hope was going for a similar thing, but it just didn’t land for me. One of the longest jokes was when an old man was needlessly graphic in his description of seeing the aliens while taking a shit. I thought it was just cringe, but maybe I’m just no fun because my theatre seemed to really enjoy that one.
I would preface this with “without spoiling the ending”, but there’s really not much to spoil. The film kind of just ends with what felt to me like a very ham fisted setup for a sequel. All in all this felt like a combination of Disclosure Day (2026) and The End of Oak Street (2026), both films I didn’t enjoy. I can firmly say this is the worst of the four Na Hong-jin films I’ve seen.