How to Kill a Franchise Before It Even Starts — SkimNews
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- Hope, the new film by South Korean horror director Na Hong-jin, runs 156 minutes and carries a budget of nearly $75 million — reportedly the highest ever for a Korean production.
- The story follows police officer Bum-seok (played by Hwang Jung-min) investigating mysterious claw marks on cattle and escalating carnage in the town of Hope Harbor near Korea's Demilitarized Zone.
- The film's first hour works as a tight creature feature in the vein of Tremors and Bong Joon-ho's The Host, with townspeople arming themselves in pickup trucks against slow-moving local authorities.
- Na Hong-jin**'s vision grows too large in the second half, where low-resolution CGI monsters and slow-motion gunplay drag, and the digital imagery fails to match the otherwise crisp visuals.
- The alien invaders are drawn from motion-capture performances by Hollywood actors Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, and the script teases a wider universe it never explains.
- Hope is Na's first film in more than 10 years, following his widely acclaimed hit The Wailing, and the director has already written a sequel — but the film's punchless ending may cost him the chance to make it.
- Hope received a sweeping U.S. rollout with premium-format screenings, a launch rarely afforded to international productions.
Why it matters: Na positioned Hope as the launchpad for a Korean monster franchise, complete with an already-written sequel, but a third act that withholds exposition risks losing the audience needed to justify that follow-up — a particularly costly gamble given the record $75 million budget and a 10-year gap since his last film.
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