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Shreds of Hope

The most immediately enduring image from Na Hong-jin’s Hope is that of a man on horseback riding through the woods while firing a machine gun behind him at a large alien creature descending on him. Obviously it is meant to stick with you, Na slows it down and holds on it for quite some time, a technique he employs in other areas of action through his extremely ambitious genre blockbuster that is by some accounts the most expensive movie in Korean cinematic history. He certainly tries as best he can to make sure as much of that money is on screen as possible, but he also directs it with his own aesthetic flare to keep the momentum up and the stakes always extremely tangible. He knows innately where and how to make a shot look cool.
And those moments really accentuate and elevate Hope against material that doesn’t always rise to a similar standard. The movie was one of the more contentious out of Cannes this year, a lot of praise going to some of its attributes while fierce criticism was directed at others. It is ultimately a very oddball movie, which in fairness isn’t unusual in the often whiplash tendencies of Korean cinema. Even still, some of its diversions don’t justify themselves in a movie that is boldly attempting to be a whole lot of things at once.
It begins as a mystery. Several miles outside the village of Hope Harbour near the DMZ, police chief Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) is called to a dirt road where a cow has been found horribly mauled. The wounds are much larger and deeper than anyone has ever seen -the best guess is a tiger. However upon returning to town, Bum-seok finds it in disarray, whole streets devastated as though by a natural disaster and several people massacred. He soon realizes that a large monster is loose in the vicinity, and though terrified, he endeavours to find and neutralize it, following its path of destruction. Meanwhile the hunters who called in about the cow, led by Bum-seok's cousin Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) follow a spate of other dead animals, mangled in a similar way, into the woods where they come to learn more about these monsters that have descended upon their community.
Na cuts back to these hunters periodically through the first hour of the film, but for the most part keeps focus on Bum-seok making his way through Hope Harbour finding (and sometimes losing) survivors and allies in pursuit of this creature who remains an off-screen menace for a long period. All we have to go on is the trail of devastation, the impacts of it nearby (cars and debris thrown from roads over), and the vague descriptions from others that are sometimes contradictory but always horrifying. Each new clue suggests more and more how outmatched Bum-seok is with simply his police rifle as he runs down roads, into buildings, and down back alleys -a witness to extremely detailed carnage and violence. There is something of a video game sensibility to it all, especially in the secondary character 'NPCs' Bum-seok joins up with periodically often separating from them just before they meet implicitly gruesome ends. 
The monster is eventually revealed in an effectively creepy sequence, its appearance and proportions quite unexpected -and it is here that Na cranks up the intensity. The monster is fast and versatile in pursuing Bum-seok, as well as rookie officer Im Sung-ae (Jung Ho-yeon), who enters the movie in a terrifically cool way. In this and many a later sequence, Na delights to indulge in close calls -his protagonists escaping death by a hair, and it is at first really effective. Though like a lot of his action tactics it starts to wear thin as the movie goes on. The nonstop adrenaline fueled by propulsive editing and thrilling long-takes can indeed reach a point of diminishing returns, especially after this first hunt has concluded. 
Still, the film does well at developing its mystery around these monsters and where they come from -while one account from an old man gets distracted frequently by scatological diversions, an autopsy sequence alongside the exploration of an anomaly the hunters come across in the woods is exceptionally moody and suspenseful, Na drawing heavily on the early acts of Alien for the enigmatic characteristics of these monstrous entities. One corpse requires a chainsaw just to penetrate through its tissue in a better instance of the film's attempts at dark humour, which for the most part fall a little flat. For example, there is a hectic beat where Bum-seok accidentally severely injures a civilian thinking he was the monster, yet a strange amount of time is spent on his accomplice, a retired colonel played by Lee Sang-hee, trying to assign blame and plot a cover story to evade their accountability when it is the furthest thing that matters under the circumstances. There is one character death, fairly major, that is played as a joke, and the entire characterization of a creepy local carpenter (Eum Moon-suk) is profoundly off in what appears to be an effort at comic relief -he is either a homicidal psychotic or a deeply offensive stereotype of autism (an unfortunate commonality in Korean cinema), and either way it is very awkward to watch.
The woods and the highway become the secondary major action set-pieces for the film, coinciding with more being gleaned about these monsters -including some semblance of a power structure, identifiable personalities and distinct designs. They even have a language to go with their crude CGI faces and proportions -the visual effects are limited and lacking in some notable respects as these characters resemble perhaps an early 2000s Star Wars alien. Weirdly enough, the monsters of this film are played via motion-capture by Hollywood actors Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell, and Cameron Britton.  With over-dubbed, non-English lines and only the barest resemblance through the effects, they contribute virtually nothing beyond the name recognition that Na can boast in the credits.
Certainly these actors aren't substantively parts of the late action scenes, which extensively involve one of the monsters in obviously CG renderings wreaking havoc and the ever-narrower escapes of Sung-ki. These woodland scenes don't tire for new elements, as though Na kept throwing in new ideas as they came to him. At one point, a crew of heavily-armed locals enter the scene and put up quite the fight, riding on horseback -and leading to the aforementioned awesome moment. But for as cool and creative as a lot of it is, the body count and the stylistic slow-mo become numbing, so too does the fact that Sung-ki is thrown by this creature multiple times, from heights and across great distances, and yet shrugs off much of the physical trauma like any superhero might. Once the action reaches a car chase and a team of protagonists trying to outrun the monster, there are again some fun and inventive beats (especially around how the vehicle is used and the characters positioned within, but they are drawn out to the point they go from thrilling to boring. Such as a character trying to jump from a horse to a car, despite both having moments to safely slow down -the back and forth of the choice, though meant to ratchet intensity, just makes for tedious indecision. And I can't tell how many times the monster is seen to be gaining on the car only for it to take several minutes to actually catch up -enough time for the humans to mount a cool defence pose.
The ending of the movie throws you for a loop, as Na introduces a huge new plot development, dumps a lot of random lore pertaining to the monsters (in spite of a much simpler and more easily understandable motivation from earlier), and engages in significant sequel-baiting. In fact there is no actual resolution for Hope, suggesting the town is in even greater danger than before -none of the surviving characters are safe. It leaves the movie on a dim note with only the sentiment of the title to encourage its audience forward. Hope is a frustrating movie -one that is legitimately exciting in its action filmmaking especially through the first act, but that wears out its every novelty eventually whilst being distracted by meagre detours and ambitious plot set-up that at least for the moment feels rather tepid. It is a very cool movie in isolated sections and moments, which are worth seeing in a theatre, but it can't maintain that power through its long runtime, sputtering notably by the end. I can't say I have a lot of hope for its follow-up.

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