'Hope' Review: A Breathless Blast of Action, Horror and Sci-Fi
By Dan Bremner - September 18, 2026
Na Hong-jin’s first film in ten years is a big, messy, genre-blending South Korean action-sci-fi-monster movie about a small town trying to survive a rampaging creature.
I loved The Wailing, so a new film from Hong-jin was always going to be high on the list. The gigantic runtime made me cautious. I needn’t have worried. Hope is a fast, outrageous, frequently gory blast. It gets silly and the CGI is rough, but the ride is worth it.
The action is the main event. Hong-jin stages inventive, high-octane set pieces with real energy and clear choreography as the camera follows and glides along the increasingly frantic monster madness. The early and mid sections deliver grindhouse-level mayhem mixed with genuine suspense. Human stunts and practical work land harder than most of the digital effects. I'm not joking when I say the third-act delivers a car set-piece with human on moving cars stuntwork that is up there with Mad Max: Fury Road.
The film splits cleanly into two halves. It opens straight into chaos as a rag-tag group of cops and locals try to fight the beast. The second half shifts into much weirder, more overtly sci-fi territory. I won’t spoil the turn (some later trailers already did the job), but the change of direction has divided people. It keeps the film unpredictable, and while it didn't always work for me, I did appreciate its gonzo and unique risk taking rather than playing it safe.
Hong-jin still knows how to mix tones. Black comedy, sudden scares, and pure spectacle sit next to each other without completely collapsing. When the film stays locked on the human characters struggling to survive, it has a rollicking, unhinged energy that works especially well on a big screen. There's so many moments of silly and quite literally at one point, toilet humour delivered in a speech about spicy pork-induced diarrhoea that most directors could not make work in their fast-paced action-horror, but somehow, this ridiculous monologue is one of the most unexpectedly funny film moments of the year.
Hwang Jung-min brings weary authority as the police chief. Hoyeon is a clear standout as the rookie officer with an energetic, physical and no-nonsense persona that's easy to root for. Zo In-sung adds solid presence as a quirky and eccentric hunter. The chemistry between the ensemble makes for such a natural and chemistry-filled rag-tag team of unlikely heroes forced into an absurd and apocalyptic scenario that you can't help but root for.
As one of the most expensive Korean films ever made, Hope aims for real scale. It plays with ideas about monsters, humans, perception and cosmic bad luck while still delivering creature-feature thrills. The ambition is obvious, and the film does feel big and expensive with its cinematic scale, earning its IMAX window with gleefully big set-pieces and insanely good sound-design (Hong-Jin was clearly taking a page out of Michael Mann’s book, as the guns are LOUD). This is very much one worth the IMAX price.
The biggest problem is the CGI. Once the aliens fully appear (motion-capture work involving Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Taylor Russell), the visual effects turn cartoonish and dated. Some of the creature work looks like it belongs in a mid-2010s video game. It is hard to ignore and undercuts the later spectacle, even when the practical action around it remains strong. It's a great shame, as the design and ideas of these creatures are very inventive, transforming from almost like celestial tree creatures to the aliens from A Quiet Place.
The ending makes it very clear this is Part 1. The film closes on a large cliff-hanger and leaves multiple major threads unresolved, setting up a sequel rather than offering a self-contained conclusion. Whether that follow-up arrives will decide how complete the story eventually feels. Based on what I got here, I am ready for a sequel immediately to see how Hong-jin can ramp things up. Just hope they get a better visual effects team next time.
Hope is a complete blast of a genre-bending action-horror-sci-fi-comedy creature feature from Na Hong-jin. Despite the excessive runtime, it moves at a breathless pace, packed with endlessly well choreographed action-scenes with extraordinary stuntwork, gore, absurd comedy and a likeable ensemble of memorable characters. It's just a shame that the visual effects are so poor in comparison to the rest of the film's many strengths.
'Hope' releases in cinemas on September 25, 2026.
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Dan Bremner
Writer
Dan is a writer from Guildford with a love for all things genre, schlocky, and thoroughly '80s, and a part-time philanthropist.
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