Machine Guns, Aliens, Horses, and High Speed U-Turns - The Movie: Hope (2026) Review

Director: Na Hong-jin

Notable Cast: Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Hoyeon, Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Lee Sang-hee, Um Mun-suk, Im Hyun-sik

 

For the start of this review, I want to note that Na Hong-jin, as a director and a writer, had already crafted three films that I would be very tempted to consider masterpieces. The Yellow Sea and The Chaser are incredibly grounded, gritty thrillers that blend action, drama, and horror nearly perfectly. The Wailing, his third film, is a masterpiece that sucker-punches its audience with suffocating folk-horror elements that bleed into dark comedy and some of the most thrilling slow-burn storytelling in genre cinema. 

 

Which is why, after seeing his latest ‘epic,’ Hope, I feel…dysregulated. 

 

Hope is Na Hong-jin drilling further into genre cinema with his swing at an action-spectacle flick. He once again weaves genres together in unconventional ways, and manages to craft a film that is, in the moment, absolutely thrilling to endure, with massive action set pieces, incredibly charming characters, and some of the most tense chases you will see in a film this year - if not this decade. Can’t say I wasn’t absolutely engaged through most of its 2.5+ hour runtime.

 

Yet, Hope is also perhaps the messiest and most baffling film I’ve seen this year. Moment to moment, I was glued to the screen, but its narrative and storytelling are wildly off-kilter at times, setting up expectations for characters, plot, or narrative, then either ignoring them or hammering them home with the power of 10 metric tons of nuclear alien fire. It makes choices that either make it the greatest dumb movie of all time or the dumbest great movie of all time. Depending on how you want to read Na Hong-jin’s intentions, I suppose. 

 

In the Earth (2021)

Director: Ben Wheatley

Notable Cast: Joel Fry, Ellora Torchia, Reece Shearsmith, Hayley Squires

 

One of the fascinating things about bold and auteur-focused voices in cinema are that audiences will ebb and flow with their projects. Ben Wheatley, despite bursting from the gates with a handful of positively regarded slabs of artistic genre fair, including the altogether incredible Kill List, has seen his clout come and go with how his audience is able to digest his films in the ways he challenges them. With his latest effort, In the Earth, Wheatley aims to jam in a solid indie and artsy horror flick in between much larger profile projects (Rebecca and The Meg 2, respectively), and the results are as strange and off-kilter as one might expect. Slathered in a naturalism meets acid trip sensibility, where the former eventually succumbs to the latter, In the Earth is a film where the experience directly feeds into its messaging and the execution between the two is experimentation in challenging its viewers to hold their own on the ride. People wanted artsy genre work after everyone bitched about Free Fire? You fuckin’ got it.

 

Possessor (2020)

Director: Brandon Cronenberg

Notable Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rossif Sutherland, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean

 

When Brandon Cronenberg exploded on the scene with his debut feature-length film, Antiviral, he firmly launched a bright red flare into the night sky. I am here. The Cronenberg name is in good hands. However, the length of time between that film and his latest, Possessor, stated something else. Perhaps the strength of that debut was a fluke? Now that Possessor has found a small, but dedicated theatrical release through Neon and Well Go USA, it becomes apparent that the time between films was worth it. Possessor is an incredible piece of in-depth, harrowing cinema. It’s a film where the intensity of its atmosphere is only matched by its bursts of abrasive violence and stark visuals. Brandon Cronenberg has delivered a modern horror film that matches some of the best work of his father, a true high-water mark, and Possessor is truly a statement film.