Dir. Na Hong-jin · 2026 · 156 min · in cinemas
Na Hong-jin made The Chaser, The Yellow Sea and The Wailing, so a new film from him is an event, and this one arrived in the main competition at Cannes in May. It is a monster movie set in Hope Harbor, a small town near the Korean DMZ. Hwang Jung-min plays Bum-seok, the local police chief, and Zo In-sung plays his cousin Sung-ki, a hunter. Sung-ki asks him to look at a dead cow with terrible wounds, and the hunters in town blame a stray tiger.
The tiger theory does not last. That is as far as this review goes, because the film is better if you meet its creatures cold. The cast also includes Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Taylor Russell, and critics say they appear as computer-generated aliens, which tells you roughly what kind of film this is.
Almost every critic who liked it points at the first hour. RogerEbert.com's Robert Daniels calls the opening stretch tense and fast, praises the tracking shots that keep you close to the police chief, and likes how the film plays with the lone-hero idea before twisting it. The Irish Times calls that same hour highly entertaining: car chases, slapstick, monster thrills and action, with practical effects giving the carnage some weight while the creature stays out of sight.
Elsewhere the tone is warmer still. Headlines from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety both stress the fun of it, with Variety also counting bawdy humour and "brilliant action" among its pleasures. Wikipedia's tally of reviews puts it at 78% positive on Rotten Tomatoes and 67 out of 100 on Metacritic, and records four out of five from the BBC.
"The first hour of “Hope” rips."
Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
The split is about what happens next. Daniels says the last two-thirds lose momentum, with chases that reveal little and some that run too long, and he finds the human characters thin and mostly unlikable. The Irish Times says the film struggles once the creatures are fully revealed, and that the mythology, the length and a near-constant score start to wear you down. The Film Stage's Luke Hicks goes furthest, calling it "a fun, middling creature feature that’s a whole hour too long".
The effects are the other sticking point. The Irish Times calls Fassbender "a distractingly artificial CGI alien", and Variety's headline names bad CGI outright. Critics do not agree on how much it matters, but nobody says the aliens look finished.
Tick what applies. This is a quick guide built from what critics describe, not a score.
Pick at least one statement.
It is a cinema release: Neon released it in the US on 9 September and in UK and Irish cinemas from 25 September, according to Screen Daily. The film was released in South Korea in July. Availability varies by country, so check your local listings.