Hope (2026)
Directed by Na Hong-jin
In the remote South Korean village of Hope Harbor, police chief Bum-seok and officer Sung-ae are called to investigate a mysterious creature wreaking havoc on the community. But all is not as it seems, and perceptions can be misleading. What begins as ignorance plants the seed of disaster, escalating through human conflict into a tragedy of cosmic proportions.
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59 films that influenced Hope
What critics say influenced Hope
Director
Steven Spielberg
Critics invoke Spielberg by name, and compare Hope to 2 of Spielberg’s films.
Visuals
On Spielberg, rather than any one film
…thanks to the Kurosawas, Friedkins, Spielbergs, Camerons and Millers of the world who’ve expanded the form…
Spielberg-esque entertainment…
A chimera of influences, from Jaws, though Attack on Titan, and even Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
…an expertly crafted monster movie with Spielbergian sensibilities (à la Jaws)…
It starts by following the Jaws rule well enough by not showing its monster until the 35-minute mark.
…perhaps stretching out the scarier when unseen “Jaws” approach for the rest of the movie…
Few Hollywood legends hold more enduring power than the ones surrounding the making of Jaws, when a 28-year-old filmmaking prodigy named Steven Spielberg recognized that his production’s mechanical shark was a piece of junk and transformed his shocker about a great white into a masterpiece of suspense about an unseen monster lurking in the deep.
Where American cinema has spent decades trying (and mostly failing) to chase the mix of restraint and spectacle in "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park,"…
It’s like if Dr. Alan Grant got to Jurassic Park and instead of a photorealistic Brachiosaurus, he was greeted by Corey Stoll’s M.O.D.O.K. from “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”
Where American cinema has spent decades trying (and mostly failing) to chase the mix of restraint and spectacle in "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park,"…
For me, that was the golden era of blockbuster monster movies: The Mummy, Deep Blue Sea, The Relic, and, yes, Jurassic Park.
Director
George Miller
Critics invoke Miller by name, and compare Hope to 1 of Miller’s films.
Visuals
On Miller, rather than any one film
…thanks to the Kurosawas, Friedkins, Spielbergs, Camerons and Millers of the world who’ve expanded the form…
…swoops in and out and around and through roads and side alleys as if he’d seen “Mad Max: Fury Road” and got drunk on that film’s motorized exhilaration…
Not since Mad Max: Fury Road has a film slammed its foot down on the accelerator so hard.
…with the Croisette having not seen this much carnage since Fury Road.
…its closest comp would be Mad Max: Fury Road…
…some of the finest action filmmaking this side of Mad Max: Fury Road…
It’s the kind of reaction reserved for bangers like Mad Max: Fury Road, especially given just how much of Hope unfolds on roads and highways at a hundred miles an hour, with characters leaning out of cop cars and practically kissing the pavement; the comparison isn’t unwarranted.
Director
James Cameron
Critics invoke Cameron by name, and compare Hope to 3 of Cameron’s films.
Visuals
On Cameron, rather than any one film
…thanks to the Kurosawas, Friedkins, Spielbergs, Camerons and Millers of the world who’ve expanded the form…
…think of James Cameron’s “Avatar” miracles, especially in “The Way of Water.”
The creatures themselves land somewhere between A Quiet Place and Avatar, all thick carapace, lanky jointed limbs, and impossible speed.
…it would be a shame if Na is actually looking at the Avatar series as his North Star because James Cameron’s films are starting, at least from a story perspective, to peter out…
…in a final coda, we see the clear influence of Avatar’s Na’vi…
…al imaginario de James Cameron, tanto al belicismo de ‘Aliens’ como a la construcción mitológica de ‘Avatar’…
…the motion-capture work is comparable to Avatar, which keeps winning Oscars for doing this kind of thing.
…al imaginario de James Cameron, tanto al belicismo de ‘Aliens’…
…think of James Cameron’s “Avatar” miracles, especially in “The Way of Water.”
…the guilty pleasure of a bang-bang-bang popcorn flick in the style of The Host…
Hope takes its place alongside The Wailing, The Host (2006) and No Other Choice as a great example of South Korea’s mastery of genre cinema.
Imagine if the run for your lives! havoc unleashed in “The Host” or “The War of the Worlds” was stretched out for the better part of an hour…
Hope departs from other great films of its ilk, like Bong Joon Ho’s The Host, by picking a rural setting.
It’s on par with The Host as one of the coolest monster movies to ever come out of South Korea.
One of the best giant monster films of the last 20 years, The Host, showed they know how to deliver rampaging beastie cinema.
Na comparte con el director de ‘The Host’ y ‘Parásitos’ un talento inusual para combinar tradición escénica y vanguardia digital.
Camera wiz Hong Kyung-pyo, the master behind Bong Joon Ho's “Parasite”…
…cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo (Parasite)…
Parasite DoP Hong Kyung-pyo…
…accomplished cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo ("Snowpiercer," "Burning," and "Parasite")…
The cinematographer behind The Wailing, Burning, and Parasite finds seemingly infinite ways to reimagine the ongoing chase in gripping, lighting-paced camera work…
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…while its forest scenes come increasingly to resemble John McTiernan’s Predator (1987)…
Then finally the big reveal, a Predator lookalike, and a very tall one who seems part human, part lizard.
Surgen los guiños al film original de la saga ‘Depredador’ –sobre todo en la parte del film que transcurre en la jungla…
This isn’t a case like “Predator” or even “Transformers” where there’s a group of actors with strong personalities that can do away with subtlety because of how they fit the roles.
…others looming between the trees stalking their human prey like the Predator alien.
On Bay, rather than any one film
I’ve heard people compare Hope to Michael Bay, and that’s only partially correct. The implication is peak Michael Bay: explosive action, eye-popping visuals, and unstoppable swagger. The reality is closer to modern Michael Bay: overindulgent, underdeveloped, and something that runs out of gas faster than expected.
The comedy mixed with the action strikes the kind of balance a guy like Michael Bay has always aimed for but never quite managed…
…by now indistinguishable Transformers-style beasts…
…not since Michael Bay’s Transformers films have I seen an action film blend practical effects and CGI so expertly…
This isn’t a case like “Predator” or even “Transformers” where there’s a group of actors with strong personalities that can do away with subtlety because of how they fit the roles.
This is also, like Na’s The Wailing (2016), about a village beleaguered by the unknown…
In what is a drastic change of pace from horror efforts such as the extraordinarily terrifying and original The Wailing, this is the first part of an epic…
2016’s internationally acclaimed horror ’The Wailing’ (out of competition). Hope has perhaps the most in common with the latter – both feature communities flung into terror and paranoia by an external threat they can’t begin to understand. And both feature half-baked law enforcement officers who are ill-equipped to deal with the unfolding carnage.
With films like The Wailing and his directorial debut, The Chaser (2008), I’ve come to expect a sense of bleakness and brutality from his work.
…scenes that alternate between the dizzying terrors of director Na Hong-jin’s last film, The Wailing, and something out of William Friedkin’s The French Connection…
…it is his first since 2016’s The Wailing, which dealt with demonic possession and serial murders in a rural South Korean town.
With films like The Wailing and his directorial debut, The Chaser (2008), I’ve come to expect a sense of bleakness and brutality from his work.
Like Na’s feature debut The Chaser (Chugyeokja, 2008), Hope is a frantic chase movie that hits the ground running and does not relent…
His debut, The Chaser, remains one of the strongest first features by any filmmaker…
Hope, which comes from Korean auteur Na Hong-jin, the man behind The Chaser and The Wailing, rocked the Croisette.
Writer/director Na Hong-jin (The Chaser) follows Beom-seok as he follow the creature’s trail, step by rubble-filled step, through labrynthian streets, alleys, and ruined shops.
Before that, Na Hong-jin had only two other feature films to his name as a director: The Chaser (2008) and The Yellow Sea (2010)…
Scenes like this hark back to Ridley Scott’s Alien…
There’s an evident debt to H.R Giger’s Alien Xenomorphs…
The monster designs look like H.R. Giger knockoffs from the Prometheus pre-production phase brought to life by CGI that occasionally look unfinished.
As for the creature design one cannot help think of the Hulk via Stranger Things and Prometheus…
Not since "Prometheus" or perhaps "A Quiet Place: Day One" has a blockbuster so convincingly captured the existential horror of humans pitted against an unstoppable force of nature…
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…adding yet another layer that feels as if it were ripped from some acid trip cross between Resident Evil and Final Fantasy…
…resembling the zombie dogs from Resident Evil if they were infected with Venom…
A chimera of influences, from Jaws, though Attack on Titan, and even Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
The easiest way to describe Hope, while leaving the lion’s share of its monster mysteries intact, is: Eddington meets Spielberg’s War of the Worlds meets Attack on Titan.