Hope
Police chief of coastal Hope Harbour, Bum-seok has a realistic understanding of what can be achieved with his resources, his team small and unable to call for backup from neighbouring provinces who have already been provided with assistance to fight wildfires, instead tasking locals led by hunter Sung-ki to join his investigation when a cow is found mutilated, blocking a road which was clear only hours before.
Its flesh gouged with claw marks far bigger than those of a bear or a tiger, torn fences indicate it was dragged across fields from where the remains of farmer Mister Ko are found dangling from a tree, Bum-seok returning to the town to gather heavier weaponry too late, a trail of destruction with buildings torn open and the dead scattered around, while in the forest the men find what appears to be a sphere which has crash landed, ploughing through the trees.
A South Korean science fiction survival thriller, Hope (Hopeu, 호프) is a change of direction for writer and director Na Hong-jin, reuniting with the star of The Wailing, Hwang Jung-min who plays the police chief, and maintaining the rural setting of that supernatural horror but with the focus on epic action, much of the runtime beyond the search and exploration a breathless chase through the town and surrounding forests.
First chasing the intruder and then running from it, the creature is tall and capable of rearranging limbs and organs to shift from bipedal to a quadrupedal arrangement, fast and deadly but, past the initial death of the cow, seemingly disinterested in livestock, humans the only targets it will pursue, the behaviour of Predator with the destructive modus operandi of Cloverfield if not quite the towering stature, casually tossing the pickup trucks of the armed men who challenge it.
A running guerilla war against an apparently indestructible monster, Zo In-sung is Sung-ki and Jung Ho-yeon is Sung-ae, the only other police officer on hand, inexperienced but proficient with weapons, but where after the first hour Hope would do well to move to a different track it continues with more of the same, impressively staged and maintaining urgency but going nowhere fast, the only deviation the sluggish parallel scenes of the warehouse autopsy and nursing home witness interview, neither adding anything significant which isn’t already apparent.
The setting never established but televisions and telephones indicating the seventies, though with modern machine guns and rocket launchers, the mismatch is also apparent in the alien species, the Gh’Ertu, their leaders voiced by Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, poorly designed, rendered and conceived, shown in the final scene to be a sophisticated society where there was no indication before, a revelation which mirrors the realisation that despite running two and a half hours there is no conclusion, Hope the setup for an as-yet unmade sequel.
Edinburgh International Film Festival continues until Wednesday 19th August
Hope will be released in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday 25th September
