Hope: Movie Review

South Korea has given us some of the best and most incredible films of the twenty-first century. Parasite, The Handmaiden, Oldboy, Memories of Murder and Train to Busan are just a handful of titles worth mentioning when discussing just how rich and impressive the country’s cinematic catalogue is. I always find myself intrigued and excited whenever I sit down to watch a film knowing it’s South Korean, because time and time again, the country’s filmmakers have proven just how exceptional their cinema can be, and they almost never disappoint.

Hope is the latest South Korean film to receive widespread international attention and acclaim. Earlier this year, it had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s most prestigious prize.

Bold. Adventurous. Daring. Bizarre. Unashamedly bananas. At times, it’s nothing short of sheer lunacy. These are just some of the words I would use to describe Hope.

If you think you know what you're getting yourself into with this movie, think again. Hope is a science fiction monster film that puts us in the middle of disaster from the very beginning. We follow Ko Bum-seok, a police chief who works in Hope Harbor, a small village populated by mostly elderly residents. Called to investigate the death of a cow with unidentifiable wounds, Ko Bum-seok quickly realises that the entire village has been attacked and rampaged by something, or by someone. As he investigates the destroyed village, Ko Bum-seok comes across the monster behind the attacks: an intelligent, humanoid creature who seems to be impossible to kill off. Saved by rookie police officer Im Sung-ae, the two are chased by the creature even after Im Sung-ae blows its leg off. The creature is finally killed after being run over by a tanker.

The first act of the movie is great. Tense, chilling and full of mystery, it very quickly draws you into its world. It’s action-packed from the very beginning, barely giving you a moment to catch your breath as the film moves seamlessly from one attack to the next, with unexpected twists constantly pushing the story in new directions. Given how compelling the first forty minutes are, it’s really disappointing that the rest of the film fails to live up to that same standard.

Hope's biggest downfall is its runtime. There’s simply no justification for the film’s final cut to run for 156 minutes, and as the second and third acts progress, the quality of the movie declines quite significantly. What starts off as an incredibly compelling film gradually loses its momentum, and the longer it goes on, the more noticeable its flaws become.

There’s a frustrating juxtaposition when it comes to the film’s visuals. The cinematography is absolutely beautiful and richly textured, with a warm, apocalyptic feeling to it. From the natural scenery to the shots of the destroyed village, some of the most stunning images of the year can be found in this movie. Even the action scenes are shot incredibly well, with the film making the absolute most of the beautiful landscapes surrounding it.

The visual effects, however, are absolutely laughable.

It’s quite unbelievable how bad the CGI looks in some of the scenes involving the monsters, especially considering the movie reportedly had a budget of $50 million. It’s hard not to be taken out of the movie during the first scene in which we see the monster, as its appearance looks cartoonish and cheap. The final car chase, although shot in an incredibly exhilarating way that gets your blood pumping, loses much of its impact because of just how poor the CGI is.

Hope ends on a rather strange note, almost as if the filmmakers are trying to set up a sequel while simultaneously making the final ten minutes feel like they belong in an entirely different film. Compared to the opening forty minutes, the ending feels so disconnected from everything that came before it that it’s hard not to walk out of the cinema feeling underwhelmed by how it all wraps up.

A true mixed bag of a movie. Throughout its almost three-hour runtime, you’re constantly being pulled in and out of the experience, completely buying into what’s happening on screen one moment, only to be taken out of it almost immediately afterwards. It loses steam far too often for me to consider it one of the best movies of the year, but when Hope is at its best, it’s absolutely blistering. Ultimately, it’s a film that leaves you thinking about what could have been, because there’s so much to admire and appreciate here, but just as much that holds it back from reaching its full potential.