Na Hong-jin’s new South Korean monster movie feels like someone took Mad Max, Red Dawn, The Incredible Hulk, Heat, Aliens, Jaws, and a Michael Bay Transformers movie, threw them all into a blender, and somehow made a smoothie out of it. I have absolutely no idea how you describe this movie to someone without making it sound completely insane, but honestly, that’s part of what makes it so damn incredible.
From the second it starts, Hope locks you in. The movie begins with what appears to be a wild-animal attack in the remote town of Hope, with police investigating while a group of hunters heads into the surrounding wilderness. Before long, it becomes very clear that whatever is out there is considerably worse than an animal. Something monstrous is hunting these people, and the entire town basically has to band together and fight back.
And I loved that aspect of the movie. There isn’t much time spent on people standing around asking what they should do. They see the monsters, realize they’re in serious trouble, grab every giant gun they can find, and start shooting. Hell, one of the running jokes throughout the movie is the police chief repeatedly asking where everyone got these enormous, unregistered guns. Meanwhile, the town somehow has an infinite supply of ammunition.
That’s the kind of movie Hope is.
The first hour is almost entirely driven by mystery and suspense. There’s a very strong Jaws influence in the way the movie slowly reveals what we’re dealing with, with the creatures feeling more frightening because you don’t completely understand them. Then the movie gradually opens itself up and becomes this massive, chaotic action spectacle.
And holy shit, is the action incredible.
There are two chase sequences in particular that are among my favorites of the year: one involving horses through the woods and another involving Hwang Jung-min and Hoyeon tearing through the streets in a police car. The car stuff especially is remarkable. People are hanging out of moving vehicles, firing enormous guns, getting thrown around, crashing into things, and somehow the camera captures everything with incredible clarity.
It’s not that shaky, incoherent action-movie camerawork where you have no idea what’s happening. You can actually SEE the action. You understand where everyone is, where the vehicles are going, and what is happening to the characters. The camera is right in the middle of the chaos without losing control of it. Some of the car cinematography is genuinely among the best I’ve seen in years, right up there with the Batman / Penguin chase and the best modern action filmmaking.
There’s also a lot of Michael Bay DNA here, specifically the good kind. Think about the Battle of Chicago in Transformers: Dark of the Moon or the climax of the first Transformers: massive destruction, incredibly fast-moving action, explosions everywhere, but the geography of the scene remains understandable. Hope has that same ability to make absolute fucking mayhem feel visually coherent.
And then Hoyeon shows up.
I genuinely think her entrance might be one of the coolest movie moments of 2026.
She steps out of a police car carrying what looks like the biggest fucking gun ever manufactured, and from that point forward, the movie basically goes pedal to the metal. Hoyeon is incredible here. She’s easily my favorite character in the movie and potentially one of my favorite characters in any movie this year. Hwang Jung-min is also fantastic, and the two of them together are a huge part of why the action works so well.
Hwang’s police chief and Hoyeon’s officer feel like actual people thrown into the middle of this completely ridiculous situation, while Zo In-sung’s Sung-ki is basically just a fucking badass who refuses to die.
That man has plot armor through the roof.
He should probably die about seven different times, but every time you think he’s finally finished, he gets back up and keeps going. And honestly? I didn’t care. Zo In-sung is so entertaining in the role that I was perfectly happy to let the man survive anything.
The movie is also surprisingly funny. There’s a lot of dark comedy throughout Hope, where something absolutely horrific will happen and you’ll find yourself laughing because of how completely insane the situation has become. There are some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, which only adds to the bizarre tone.
And yes, the violence gets gnarly.
There are some great slow-motion kills, including one particularly insane moment where a creature grabs a dead body by the leg and uses it to swing into another person, essentially cutting them in half. It’s gruesome, ridiculous, and shot beautifully.
The creatures themselves worked for me. The CGI isn’t perfect, and I can absolutely understand why some people might have an issue with it, particularly toward the end. But I thought the monsters were genuinely scary. They’re enormous, they’re ridiculously fast, and they absolutely do not mess around. The way they move gives them this almost Incredible Hulk-like physicality, where you can feel how powerful they are just by watching them move.
What’s interesting is that Na Hong-jin eventually wants you to see these creatures as more than just monsters. Without getting too deep into spoilers, you begin to understand that these aliens have their own story. They’re not simply invading Earth because they’re evil. They’re searching for their lost child, and humanity has killed it. There’s even an earlier moment where one of the creatures appears genuinely distressed, which makes you start to question the entire conflict.
That idea becomes much more prominent during the final stretch of the movie.
And this is probably where Hope is going to lose some people.
The final five to fifteen minutes get fucking weird. The movie slows down considerably, shifts perspective, starts exploring the aliens’ side of the story, and introduces some absolutely insane mythology involving their beliefs, fate, resurrection, and a spaceship crashing into Earth. At one point, Michael Fassbender’s alien literally rips out his own heart while talking about using it to resurrect his dead son.
I was sitting there thinking, What is happening?
And somehow, I didn’t care.
I was still completely locked into the movie.
I can absolutely see people being thrown by that ending. I can even see people thinking the movie loses some of its momentum when it starts humanizing the aliens and setting up what could become a larger universe. But for me, it doesn’t erase everything that came before it.
This is blockbuster filmmaking at its finest. Hope reportedly had nowhere near the budget of a massive Hollywood tentpole, yet there are sequences here that feel like they belong in a $200 million studio movie. And while the CGI can occasionally look rough, I would much rather watch a movie with imperfect effects and immaculate filmmaking than a giant Hollywood blockbuster with hundreds of millions of dollars thrown at effects that still look terrible.
The filmmaking here is the star.
Na Hong-jin is directing the absolute shit out of this movie. The camera work, the staging, the action choreography, the sense of geography, the slow motion, the sound, the way he uses the landscape—it’s all so confident. It honestly makes me want to go back and watch more of his work.
And then there’s the way the people of Hope come together. That’s probably my favorite thing about the movie underneath all the explosions and giant guns. These people don’t know what the hell they’re dealing with. They’re scared. They’re confused. Even the characters who are supposed to be in charge eventually reach the point where they’re basically saying, “I don’t fucking know what we do now.”
They run into the unknown together. They grab whatever weapons they can find. They try to protect one another. There’s something really satisfying about watching an entire community collectively decide that they’re going to take their chances against these enormous alien monsters.
By the end, Hope had me wanting to see it again immediately. I honestly wish I’d seen it in IMAX because I can only imagine how insane the scale and sound would be. I’d even love to see this in 4DX just to experience how completely nuts it could get.
This movie isn’t perfect. There are moments where it drags, the CGI isn’t always great, and the final stretch is going to be divisive as hell. I also don’t know how easily I can recommend it to everyone, because this is a VERY weird movie.
It is one of my favorite movies of the year, and easily one of the most pulse-pounding theatrical experiences I’ve had in recent memory. I will never say no to aliens, insane chase sequences, enormous guns, monsters throwing people through the air, and a South Korean town full of people saying, essentially, “Fuck it, let’s shoot these things.”
Na Hong-jin has made something completely ridiculous, completely ambitious, and completely unforgettable.
HOPE = 93/100
