When director Na Hong-jin’s Hope begins, the air is already thick with unease. A mutilated cow carcass lies in the middle of the street near Hope Harbour, a serene village near the Korean Demilitarised Zone that mostly houses the elderly.
When local police chief Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min, The Wailing, Veteran) arrives on scene, he is met by a party of hunters armed with heavy firepower, led by Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung, Escape from Mogadishu, The King), the police chief’s headstrong cousin. They’re convinced that a tiger has come in from the mountains and forest near the village.
Their claim has a fatal flaw: the slash marks on the cow are deeper than any tiger known to man.
The hunting team is sent into the woods, while Ko Bum-seok rides into the city and notices the carnage: the market is vacant and torn apart, pillars of smoke rise from alleyways, followed by gunfire and screams. Then, he sees a car tumbling over a screaming man who is trying to run away. A few seconds later, a bicycle flies from an alleyway just around the bend, totalling the shop front that he was standing in front of.
Pakistan’s shorter theatrical cut gives Hope a much-needed boost, but director Na Hong-jin’s unwieldy alien thriller still struggles to live up to its monstrous ambitions
And then, he sees it: a 10-foot humanoid monster, screaming like a banshee, running through the streets towards him like a derailed locomotive. The heavy-duty guns are mostly ineffective against it — however, something catches Ko Bum-seok’s eye: the monster is crying and angry — it almost looks pitiful.
By now, nearly an hour has passed into Na Hong-jin’s two-hour, 36-minute-long film. So far, its relationship with the viewer has been a tough push-and-pull game.
Hope’s build-up, thick with atmosphere and ambiguity, keeps one in intrigue while the hunting party sidetrack pulls one out of the pace and emotion. To misquote Rudyard Kipling, it would have been better if never the twain should have met. But then they do… in the version I saw days before Hope’s Pakistani release (available to rent online).
The awkward, long drawn-out pace of the original cut wasn’t as great a creative call for the director of The Wailing — a film that pays off in spades after the end (you have to really think about it in order to get it) — nor is Hope as engaging as Na Hong-jin’s perfect serial killer thriller The Chaser.
Na Hong-jin should have cut the movie down to size instead. So imagine my surprise when the local version did just that: Hope’s theatrical Pakistan cut slashes 25 minutes off the original runtime. The reduction improves the pacing and the viewer’s connection, and makes the unappealing aspects (of which there are quite a few) less conspicuous.
Despite this tightening, one still disagrees with the monster designs and story.
The main monster, Va’migere, is stylistically different from the others. While it looks like a reject from the Attack on Titan anime — and moves like one too — its ilk share starkly different designs.
The second, Ma’veyyo, a giant dog-like creature, looks like it lunged out from a Resident Evil game. The third, Ai’dovor, is a long-limbed female with nature-esque traits, blending more naturally with the forest and the trees. And the fourth, J’aur, is another giant female. However, she has antler-like branches coming out of her back, a shiny, opal-like complexion, and visibly defined lips, as if she just put on some make-up.
The creatures are aliens voiced by Hollywood actors Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell and Cameron Britton, playing Ma’veyyo, J’aur, Ai’dovor and Va’migere, the first alien that bulldozed the village, respectively.
Near the climax, they speak — their human forms and faces emoting intelligence, sadness and a backstory. The audience realises that we humans are the bigger monsters, and that a much larger intergalactic threat looms. The reveal is late, inelegant and unenticing, signalling a part two that may never come (the $46 million film has only grossed $47 million to date).
Unlike his last few films, Na Hong-jin let the cat slip out of the bag on this one. While his main actors, Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung and Jung Ho-yeon (playing Im Sung-ae, the tough rookie cop you see in the trailers and posters) are fine performers, one hardly connects with their characters, given how little we know of their backstories.
If the director had stuck to consistent designs, streamlined the story and kept the bigger reveals for sequels, Hope could have hoped for a better run in cinemas — especially if it was cut down like the far better Pakistani version.
Released by Hum Films in Urdu (rather, Hindi) and English-dubbed versions, Hope is rated “U”, despite showing scenes of hacking, slashing and an alien’s autopsy
The writer is Icon’s primary film reviewer
Published in Dawn, ICON, November 1st, 2026
