Review: HOPE Is a Gloriously Unhinged Sci-Fi Action Thriller and it Was a Ton of Fun!

Na Hong-jin’s Hope is one hell of a bonkers sci-fi action movie, and while it certainly has its issues, I had an absolute blast watching this thing spiral into increasingly insane territory.

The trailer was what originally sold me because it looked like Na, the filmmaker behind The Wailing, was going to deliver a wild South Korean alien invasion thriller filled with chaos, destruction, and some crazy creature action.

That’s exactly what I got, but Hope also went in directions I never saw coming. It starts out relatively simple, with police chief Bum-seok, played by Hwang Jung-min, investigating the brutal death of a prized bull in a secluded village, but that small mystery quickly explodes into a full-blown extraterrestrial nightmare.

From there, the movie keeps escalating, throwing increasingly strange ideas at us until I eventually stopped trying to guess where it was going and happily let it drag me along for the ride.

This isn’t going to be a movie for everyone, and I can already imagine some people being completely frustrated by it, but I couldn’t help be get locked into its particular brand of madness.

The action is where Hope really kicked ass. Once the aliens are unleashed and start chasing these characters trying to kill them, the movie goes into overdrive with some incredibly long and energetic pursuit sequences through the destroyed town, forests, roads, and highways, with people escaping on foot, in cars, and even on horseback.

These aliens are savage. They’re huge, vicious, ridiculously fast, and seemingly indestructible, which gives the action a great feeling of desperation because you’re constantly wondering how these poor people are possibly going to survive.

Na also shoots a lot of the creature action in broad daylight and on real locations, which gives the destruction a physical scale that I loved. There are demolished buildings, exploding vehicles, debris scattered everywhere, and these characters scrambling through environments that look like they’ve just been obliterated by an actual disaster.

At its best, the action has this wonderfully frantic quality where it feels like everyone is barely hanging on while these extraterrestrial monsters come tearing after them.

Now, this is also where you really have to dig deep into your reserves of suspension of disbelief because the chase logic can get pretty damn funny. These aliens run unbelievably fast, yet somehow regular humans, horses, and vehicles repeatedly manage to stay just far enough ahead of them.

I kept thinking, “There’s no freakin’ way that alien hasn’t caught you yet!” The creatures will come tearing across the landscape like intergalactic missiles, barrel around a corner, and somehow our heroes get another few precious seconds to escape.

The visual effects don’t always help sell it either. The alien designs themselves are very cool and different from the typical creatures we see in these kinds of movies, but when they start moving at extreme speeds, the effects can look rough.

Their movement occasionally has this strange fast-forward quality that makes them look like they’re operating at a completely different frame rate from everything else. It seems like the ambition was simply bigger than what the VFX budget could consistently deliver.

Still, I was having so much fun with the insanity of the sequences that I eventually just accepted the wonkiness and went with it. I also love the fact that Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander are playing two of the main aliens through performance capture. The casting here is surprising!

What really gives Hope its personality, though, is the collection of wonderfully quirky human characters caught in the middle of this nightmare.

Bum-seok isn’t some badass sci-fi hero who immediately knows how to handle an alien invasion. He’s an overwhelmed police chief trying to understand what the hell is happening while his entire world gets ripped apart.

Then you’ve got his gung-ho subordinate Sung-ae, played by Hoyeon, and hunter Sung-ki, played by Zo In-sung, along with a bunch of other eccentric personalities who keep the movie funny even when things get brutal.

That running sense of humor is something I enjoy about a lot of South Korean genre films, where comedy can suddenly emerge from situations that should be absolutely horrifying. Sometimes Hope pushes the jokes a little too far and undercuts tension that probably should have been allowed to build, but for the most part I enjoyed the tonal weirdness.

It makes these people fun to spend time with, and their very human reactions to something completely beyond their understanding kept me invested.

There’s something inherently entertaining about watching this bunch of oddballs desperately trying to stay one step ahead of seemingly unstoppable aliens while making questionable decisions and somehow continuing to survive.

The movie gets even more interesting when the story starts digging into what these aliens actually represent and expands the story beyond a straightforward humans-versus-monsters scenario.

There’s a philosophical component involving faith, perspective, communication, and the consequences of beings who fundamentally don’t understand each other, and I wasn’t expecting the movie to start exploring those ideas after spending so much time watching giant aliens chase people through forests.

That contrast between the goofy human characters and the more serious ideas surrounding the aliens gives Hope an unusual flavor, although it also contributes to how messy the movie becomes.

The scope keeps expanding, new questions continue piling up, and the story starts introducing ideas so late that I found myself wondering how much longer it would take to wrap up all the story treads, then it just ends!

Seriously, the ending is probably my biggest frustration with Hope because it left the audience on a major cliffhanger that basically left me sitting there thinking, “Okay... so I guess we’re getting a sequel?” I certainly hope we are, because after taking me this far into the craziness, I need to know how this story actually ends!

Even with that abrupt ending, I came away from Hope having thoroughly enjoyed myself. There’s so much personality, imagination, and wonderfully strange energy packed into this movie, and I loved watching the story keep getting pushed it into increasingly unexpected territory.

I’d rather watch a filmmaker swing this hard and occasionally miss than sit through another safe and forgettable sci-fi movie that disappears from my brain before I get to my car in the parking lot.

Hope gave me crazy action, bizarre creatures, lovable weirdos, unexpected philosophical ideas, and several moments that had me wondering what the hell I was watching.

Hope may be a messy ride, but it’s a damn entertaining one, and if Na gets to make that sequel, I’m absolutely showing up to see how much crazier this thing can get!