Hope review: Na Hong-jins savage and smart monster movie is a must-see

Hope is the epic monster movie that The End of Oak Street failed to be. Bear with me; this is more than a "they're both monster movies" comparison.

Both films focus on a humble neighborhood under siege by rampaging beasts. Both feature gruesome violence as mankind gets swatted down the food chain. Both center on heroes who are alarmingly bad at recognizing danger. But only one satisfies as eye-popping entertainment with something worthwhile to say.

Where The End of Oak Street was a clumsy Spielberg pastiche lacking sense and humanity, Hope is a rollicking, action-packed thrill ride that roars with the intensity of Hollywood blockbusters without compromising its unnerving commentary.

Why choose between thought-provoking cinema and a bonkers popcorn movie? Na Hong-jin's Hope is both.

Hope is a Jaws descendant that deserves the title.

From South Korean writer/director Na Hong-jin (The Wailing, The Yellow Sea) comes a monster movie that steals smartly from Spielberg's Jaws, without feeling like a rip-off.

Like Jaws, Hope kicks off with a small town police chief — in this case, Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) — who finds a curious corpse in the rural lands outside of his town. Local hunters have called him over a dead cow, whose side is sliced wide open with confoundingly large claw marks. Could it be a bear? A tiger? Or spies from North Korea looking to sow confusion?

While the chief heads into town to investigate further, his cousin, a brash young hunter named Sung-ki (Zo In-sung), leads others into the woods to investigate. Like Brody from Jaws, Bum-seok is determined to protect his people from this mysterious beast, but he is alarmingly ill-equipped to manage it.

Na sets up some subtle visuals that suggest this ineptitude as soon as Bum-seok struts onscreen. The cow carnage before him suggests a foe that is massive, mighty, and savage. By contrast, Bum-seok wears a sharply pressed policeman's uniform, with flared pant legs that accent his kicky little leather boots. He is a man of order, not chaos. So, much like the sea-fearing Brody on Quint's boat, Bum-seok becomes a fish out of water in his own town when the monster comes calling.

Like Spielberg, Na takes his time revealing the full majesty and horror of this monster. Nearly an hour passes before the beast is revealed onscreen. But along the way, Na gives his audience plenty to scream over.

Hope is an exhilarating, surprising, and totally gnarly action movie.

For the film's first leg, Na binds his audience to Bum-seok, in both quest and perspective. Like him, we are eager to understand this creature, more eager perhaps to see it for ourselves. But Na toys with us. When Bum-seok gets back to town, he realizes the monster is already here.

He races through its path of destruction, past shattered market stalls, crumbling walls, and bloodied corpses that litter the street. He follows the sounds of smashing, gunfire, and screams. His neighbors rush past him, firing an array of heavy artillery. And still, he is always too many steps behind to see what's causing this destruction. Our idea of the monster is shaped by details in the wreckage, like how big a hole it leaves in a concrete wall or how far it throws an entire pick-up truck.

This frenzied pursuit sequence spins through streets, battered businesses, and down gulleys. Along the way, Bum-seok will be mocked for his confusion and team up with a reluctant ally, who carries a bow and arrow. And in every frame, the excitement mounts. By withholding the monster, Na urges the audience to be children again, with our imaginations running wild at the bump in the night.

Critics out of the film's world premiere at the Cannes International Film Festival were divided about the computer animation that brings Hope's creatures to life. IndieWire reported the film got a new cut and a polish on its CGI since then. Having not seen the Cannes cut, I squealed with absolute joy when the first monster was revealed in the theatrical release of Hope. And for all those critters that came after, I was likewise giddy.

Sure, not all of the GCI is seamlessly composited into the locations of town and forest that Hope traverses. But Na's collection of creatures is intriguing and unexpected, brought to life by captivating animation that makes these bumps in the suspension of disbelief pass in forgettable flickers.

Hope pivots hard in its second act.

Not long after the monster is revealed, Bum-seok teams up with rookie cop Sung-ae (Squid Game's Hoyeon), who's got a brash mouth to match her booming assault rifle. After a jaw-dropping car chase that makes The Bourne Identity look like Driving Miss Daisy, they finally, fatally fell the monster. But we're only over an hour into this 156-minute movie. So, what next?

Well, for one, Na will lead us back to the woods, where Sung-ki and the other hunters are about to have close encounters of their own. More action will spark there, while back in town, Bum-seok chases answers to all the questions raised by the monster attack. Here, Na weaves in new characters, who are quirky and influenced by small-town superstition. (Think Widow's Bay.) And as they find answers, Bum-seok and Sung-ae find disturbing truths about who's really to blame for the devastation before them.

In the second half, Hope allows its audience more room to breathe than it does its human heroes. Comical monologues about hunting and defecation keep things light, even as the realizations turn dark. From there, Na pulls us out of Bum-seok's perspective, to one more knowing, and empathetic.

The looks Na grants of the monsters are no longer strictly to scare us. The following conflict between man and beast becomes one where we not only revel in the outrageous and brutal action that turns armed men into ribbons of flesh and rivers of blood. But we are also urged to consider the origins of this violence — in between the screams and laughter that Na earns with each new chase or challenge.

Hope is confusing, but strategically so.

The absolutely outstanding action sequence of monster-made mayhem should be reason enough for genre fans to buy a ticket. Na's vision of action makes room for thrills, surprises, scares, and laughs with generous abandon. Yet Hope offers more than an absolutely outrageous spectacle.

Again, I point to the failings of The End of Oak Street. Yes, it too offered violent beasts and gory action sequences. But the disdain — or maybe indifference — that American filmmaker David Robert Mitchell had for the family at the center of his movie makes watching them less fun and more torturous. The fact that they never got any better at recognizing the threat around them felt more an insult to the audience than a rich terrain for slasher trope scares.

By contrast, Hope has an empathy for its foolish humans, even as it presents them in brief sketches. Unlike Jaws, we never learn much about the police chief's life outside of this very bad day on the job. When Sung-ae is introduced, it's with a fearless attack on the monster, and virtually no context about her character. Likewise, other locals will pop into the plot, only to disappear for a stretch, then return as a corpse (or part of one).

There were moments where I felt my brain leaping to bridge the gap between what I saw and what I knew. But here's the thing: 1) These little details don't matter, and 2) the confusion Na causes with such leaps reflects the confusion his townsfolk are enduring as they try to survive. The details of their backstory are not as crucial to who they are in their actions and to each other. Essentially, the first half of Hope urges us to look for clues of what is going on. The second half suggests that we might have been focusing on the wrong ones.

All this leads to a climax that is rigorously exciting, with a chase scene that had my heart thumping so hard it should count as a cardio workout. Here is where Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Taylor Russell pop up in surprising roles I won't spoil here. But if you know they're in it going into the movie, there's no mistaking them onscreen.

Admittedly, not every sequence needs the time Na gives it to play out. Some beats feel redundant, especially in the final sequence. There, it seems either Na is second-guessing his audience's capacity for understanding, or is indulging in the sci-fi flourishes of Hope. But in any case, Hope's runtime flies by.

Chasing the audience across a village marketplace, through mountainside forests, into stranger caverns, and down a seemingly endless highway, Na offers a monster movie that is unique, captivating, and explosive fun. His monsters and men are sketches, but beautifully realized through a terrific cast and thoughtful visual effects that spur our imaginations rather than offer easy answers. What Na has made here is a marvel that smartly plucks from Spielberg's playbook to create something fresh, fun, and challenging.

I didn't just laugh, gasp, scream, and squeal watching this movie. I was thrust full-bodied back into what it was like being a kid seeing a Godzilla movie or Jaws for the first time. I've seen hundreds or thousands of movies and monsters since then. But with a keen awareness of audience and a passion for action and creatures, Na brought it all back. Hope made me feel like a kid again as I watched it, then dared me to confront the hard truths at its heart. Through that journey, Hope becomes the kind of movie that doesn't let go, and cheers to that.

Hope was reviewed out of the Toronto International Film Festival. It opens in theaters in the U.S. on Sept. 9.