Hope (2026)

 

This is a South Korean action, science fiction, horror film that is apparently the most expensive South Korean movie ever made. I can say that it is a pretty handsome movie, and makes the locale look more appealing than I had expected. It also has quite a bit of humor in it which makes it go down a lot more easily than otherwise might have at almost 3 hours in length. What the hell is a movie like this doing running for 3 hours? It makes no sense. 

Speaking of making no sense, the second half of the movie serves up a variety of moments that can be fun to watch but will be difficult to justify from a story point of view. But I will get to that in a moment. Let me start off by talking about the thing that works best concerning the movie, and that's the first 45 minutes. As usual when there's a monster, the frightening moments all take place before we actually see the monster. In this case, although they were heavy action moments as we were getting set up, the movie does shift from a horror film to a straight action movie. And that's because the horror of the unknown is undone by the horror of the CGI that is used to create the antagonists.

My description of the plot is very brief. The police chief of a small South Korean fishing Village, is confronted by destruction that seems to suggest a massive monster is loose and at first he assumes it is a bear or a tiger. The size of the damage created in the wake of the monsters movement through the village tells us that this is no Earth-like mammal but rather something of enormous size and Power, and as we ultimately discover it originates someplace else in the universe. Yes it is an alien movie, I don't think that's the biggest spoiler. 

The thing that spoils the movie is not the reveal of the origin of the monster, but rather it is the abandoning of the mystery around the monster and what it looks like and what it is after. The story is a little confusing, because it turns out that there may be two different alien species that are involved. At least that's the way it seemed to me when we get a more extensive look and a set of alien creatures that are not in the village but rather are in the nearby Woods. They look distinctly different from the creature that created all the havoc in the village and at the conclusion of the film there's reason to believe that more than one set of visitors is present.

I think the movie is supposed to also play as a comedy, there are simply too many ridiculous things that happen in the story to take it seriously all of the time. One of the characters is tossed about, slapped and squashed in so many ways that it's impossible to believe that he survived. Like the Energizer Bunny however, he keeps showing up and fighting on. Improbably he starts out as a somewhat unsavory character, but morphs through sheer survival into a heroic figure.

The Village police chief is a reluctant hero, and sometimes he is a little feckless, but that doesn't mean that he is unsympathetic. I don't have a huge amount of experience with Korean filmmaking , but I have noticed there's a tendency to have some slapstick moments and annoyingly over the top characters appear in awkward situations. The chief runs into several locals, and some members of his own Department, that are laughably annoying. His character however is required to be annoying without the humor, and that makes the story frustrating at times because if anyone would  listen to somebody, maybe we would get to the point a little quicker.

There are two extremely long Chase scenes that take place in the film. In the First Act you have the excellent one, which follows the police officer in Pursuit of the monster as it smashes through the village with impunity, and kills dozens residents in the process. We see the Mayhem from his perspective as the monster stays just out of his view, around corners, below the horizon or on the other side of a wall. There's some horrifying visual images which also provoke some laughter because they are so over the top. This is a pretty gruesome film. Once the target of the monster, the police chase reverses itself, and continues on for another long sequence.  These scenes are shot with great clarity and occasionally with lenses that make the edges of the film feel like they're bending in scope, which influences  the way the audience is watching the action. In the last Act of the film there's an equally long Chase and the police chief is again involved, but here it doesn't feel original or is interesting because they repeat the same moment a dozen times. The monster chasing them gets close, they shoot something at it or it misses a turn and it falls back a little but then we repeat the process. It got a little redundant.

Consider this a spoiler warning, which I usually try to avoid but which I think is essential in talking about this movie and letting you decide whether or not you want to see it. In the last 15 minutes, the focus changes and the aliens begin to be our protagonists as opposed to our antagonists. It feels like a completely different movie has started, and there is not really a very clear transition to it. My guess is that this film is supposed to be the first in a series of movies portraying what is essentially an alien invasion. The trouble is we don't quite know why they're here, and we certainly don't know why there are more than one of them, including crashing spaceships. It's as if we're repeating the mystery of the second set of aliens but they're not recognizing and showing them. I don't think you can do that trick twice and get away with it. 

I was not unhappy that I saw the movie, but I was surprised how long it ran. Both of the chase sequences I mentioned could have been cut in half in the film would be just fine. Just be glad that we're not in charge of deciding whether to make the second film a sequel to this movie. I don't have a strong desire to see what happens next, and if you're going to end on a cliffhanger that really feels like something that you want to do, make us care. This movie seems to think that by putting words in the mouths of the aliens we will change our perspective and want to see it resolved. I think they're wrong.