Na Hong-jin’s creature feature has enough wit and well-staged pursuit to make its excesses worth enduring. We recommend it for the action, with fair warning that the creatures are less convincing than the chases.
Hope is a good monster film that goes on too long. Na Hong-jin, who writes and directs, keeps finding comedy in the efforts of a rural community to survive encounters with alien creatures. These people can be brave and still make a mess of things. That gives the action a welcome unpredictability, though 157 minutes is more pursuit than the story can comfortably sustain.
Hong Kyung-pyo’s cinematography makes those pursuits worth the trouble. The car, horse and foot chases have a fluidity that keeps the movement interesting even when the basic business is simply getting away. We laughed at the characters’ fumbling attempts to cope, then found ourselves frightened for them during the car and horse chases. The grace of the filming does not soften the danger. Na’s staging keeps the comedy inside the action.
Lee Hwo-kyoung’s production design is particularly effective in the first hour, giving the small-town setting a prominence it loses as the chases accumulate. That early attention to the place helps the comedy by making the emergency feel like an interruption to ordinary life. Hoyeon, as Lim Sung-ae, stands out in an ensemble willing to look foolish. The performances take the peril seriously enough for the humour to work, even when the characters’ decisions are difficult to admire.
Kim Sun-min’s editing keeps the opening stretch moving without squeezing out its comic interruptions. Michael Abels’s score adds further urgency, and the combination makes even a long run of danger surprisingly easy to sit through at first. As the pursuits accumulate, though, the same speed begins to wear. The individual sequences remain exciting, but the film needs a stronger reason to keep sending us into another one. A shorter cut could have preserved the excitement without asking quite so much of it.
The creatures themselves are less dependable. The digital effects can look dated beside the confidence of the live-action staging, and this matters in a film that asks us to spend so long fearing them. Na also burdens the later stretches with explanations of the science-fiction mythology, making the film harder work just when it should be finding a fresh reason to press on. We will leave the particulars alone; it is the amount of explanation, and its effect on the pace, that disappoints.
As a creature feature, Hope is strongest when it lets practical problems occupy its characters: danger is immediate, and their responses are fallible enough to keep us interested. Its broad humour belongs in that situation, and Na deserves credit for resisting the temptation to make everyone efficient and solemn. The uneven effects and repeated pursuits are worth tolerating for action staged with this much care. Choose it for an evening when a great deal of running and a certain amount of foolishness sound appealing, and allow for a long one.
