Hope

by Mike McGranaghan

The speed of the Death Star raid in Star Wars. The innovation of the truck chase in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The mounting dangers of the opening scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Those are a few of the things I was reminded of while watching Hope, the thrilling new monster movie from writer/director Na Hong-jin. Calling it just a monster movie is selling it short, though. The film screened in competition at Cannes for a reason.

Hope Harbor is a small village in South Korea. Police chief Beom Seok (Huang Jun-min) is called in to investigate when a mutilated cow is discovered in the middle of a road. Subsequent chaos at the downtown area reveals the culprit is an alien figure that is terrorizing the community. The thing is massive and very difficult to topple. As the chief teams up with female cop Sung-ae (Hoyeon) to look into the situation, a group of hunters begins following tracks into the woods, where they make several shocking discoveries, including that there are more aliens out there. In motion capture performances, Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander portray two of those aliens.

Hope runs two hours and thirty-seven minutes, although that length flies right by. Hour one is mostly a nail-biting battle in the town, with Beom Seok trying to track down the creature. The movie smartly doesn’t show us the alien for a long time, allowing the sight of its destruction to build suspense. Once it does terrifyingly show up, there are some astonishingly gory kills, as when it swings the corpse of a dead man at another guy so hard that the man’s upper body essentially explodes. The middle section provides more information about the creatures, including a graphic autopsy scene, and plays like a gripping procedural. Once we have the relevant information, Na Hong-jin pulls out all the stops for a lengthy climactic chase that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

The way everything is filmed adds a lot to the impact. Action sequences are inventively staged, then breathlessly photographed. The camera is often in movement, tracking Beom Seok as he runs through Hope Harbor’s streets or riding a couple inches off the bumper of speeding vehicles. This gives you the sensation that you’re right in the thick of the terror. Without ruining anything, there are traits to the alien attacks that catch you by surprise. They move in unexpected ways and have such immense power that one blow from them can send a human flying hundreds of feet away, smashing through trees or into the sides of brick buildings.

That, combined with a breakneck pace, helps build an adrenaline-pumping rush. At times, I could feel myself making tense facial expressions during the mayhem. Other times, I uttered “ooh” and “ahh” noises because something onscreen gave me a jolt. It’s an old cliché to say a movie is like a rollercoaster ride. I’ll put a spin on that cliché by saying that watching Hope is like riding a rollercoaster backwards, while strapped in upside down. It grabs you from the start and whips you around for two and a half hours.

The movie also has a devilish streak of humor running through the middle. A scene in which an old man describes encountering the aliens while trying to take a bowel movement in the woods might be the funniest cinematic moment of the year. There’s a streak of humanity, too. The story is a tribute to the way disparate people come together in times of crisis. Cops, hunters, vagrants, and trade workers join forces to face down the extra-terrestrial threat. In perhaps the most intriguing element, the aliens played by Fassbender and Vikander are developed as characters near the end, allowing the audience to have a certain amount of empathy for their plight. It isn’t a stretch to say the film deals with how society treats outsiders.

The CGI is largely well done, except for some shots where the aliens run. Visually, they look like something out of a video game in those spots. I honestly didn’t care, though, because Hope had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. When the end credits started to roll, I felt exhausted and exhilarated.