2026 Hope

• Directed by: Na Hong-Jin
• Written by: Na Hong-Jin
• Stars: Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Hoyeon
• Run Time: 2 Hours, 37 Minutes
• Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXUdRQPLBjk

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It starts with the discovery of a dead bull outside of town and quickly escalates into a battle for survival against something big and angry. The action starts early and even the calm parts are tense. There’s loads of fast vehicles, gunfire, explosions, gore, and general carnage. And they manage to work in quite a bit of dark humor. The writing is especially good, as is the acting.

It’s a long one but it was feeling worth it. Until the very ending which didn’t make enough sense and was too abrupt. Kevin hates it for the ending.

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s the 1980s in South Korea.

A policeman goes to a remote farming area, where there’s a dead bull blocking the road. The huge cow has been torn apart. None of them saw what did it, but it was big. Could it have been a bear or a tiger? Supposedly, tigers come down from Siberia every once in a while, right through the minefields. Credits roll.

Sung-Ki and “The Boys” laugh at the tiger story they told the policeman, but then they find a ruined fence that something big went through. While the policeman goes back to town, Hope Harbor, the guys find a smashed up farm that the dead bull came from – and more dead bulls. And a shredded human arm hanging from a tree.

The police chief, Beom-Seok, drives past a building with a big hole in the side. There’s a dead woman inside, and the place has been wrecked. Whatever it is, it’s in town now. He meets up with an old hunter and they continue to track the creature. They end up shooting a guy by accident and try to patch him up with toilet paper.

Meanwhile, Sung-Ki and the hunters are out in the woods by the farm. They find strange blue goo on a fallen tree as well as a very large, very dead bear.

Beom-Seok and his partner finally find the creature, and it’s a twelve-foot tall, very fast, humanoid monster with big claws. They fill it full of bullets from two carbines and all it does is make it mad. Soon the partner is dead and Beom-Seok is the one being chased. A policewoman, Sung-Ae, shows up with a grenade launcher/machine gun that finally does some damage but not enough. She picks up Beom-Seok. Even with a leg missing, the creature is still able to just about outrace her speeding police car.

At last, Beom-Seok gets a good look at the monster, and it’s clearly afraid of them now. It gets completely smooshed when a truck runs over it. It’s dead!

… And then we cut to the hunters in the woods again. They come across a large hunting camp that’s been destroyed, but no sign of bodies.

An old man tells Sung-Ae that there are more of those creatures out in the woods. He saw three of them a few days ago in the woods. We get a flashback and see four of them.

A medical examiner goes with Beom-Seok to examine the dead creature. She tries cutting into its chest, but it’s so tough it takes a chainsaw. She finds organs that she doesn’t recognize.

A guy comes to Beom-Seok and says he’s got a dead monster he killed in his freezer at home. Turns out, he does have one; a small alien. This looks like a small version of the monster from earlier, could it have been a child? Beom-Seok puts it together that the big one was just looking for its baby.

The guys in the woods find a big silver sphere parked there. Are the monsters aliens? There are six oversized chairs on the spaceship. Soon, they’re all back outside being hunted. All the aliens look different, each one a different type but all are really hard to kill. There’s lots of hunters being hunted and mayhem. Then Sung-Ae and company show up with heavy armament to join the fight.

There’s a great deal more running, driving, and shooting, and then the massive mothership shows up, crashing in flames. We cut to the aliens’ point of view with subtitles; the emperor’s ship is falling. It falls from the sky and takes out an entire mountain. Then it explodes, big-time. The aliens are on Earth searching for their prince.

… And then it stops as the two aliens discuss plans for what comes next.

Brian’s Commentary

There’s a lot of effective humor here as the only policeman in town spends half the movie looking for a monster and doesn’t even catch a glimpse of it. The police just might be a tad underfunded in this town.

“Where’d all these guns come from?” “You really wanna ask that?” comes up several times in the film. I’m guessing guns in Korea aren’t common.

It’s super long, but it’s got a lot going on at all times, very high energy, action packed, and with a lot of good monster action.

Was that the ending or a lead-in to a second part? It was awfully abrupt.

Kevin’s Commentary

We finally get a good look at the creature about 45 minutes in, and it was very effectively handled up to that point. I was really impressed with the script, it flows well and manages to work in some humor. The back and forth between places worked and kept it more interesting.

Michael Fessbender makes a weird, and perhaps unnecessary, cameo as one of the aliens in one of their forms.

I believed everything about the movie except how much injury Sung-Ki takes and then does some really acrobatic antics.

It’s on the long side but with enough cool stuff happening to keep it entertaining. I liked it until the very ending when they threw some POV alien stuff at us with royalty and a blown up emperor and some politics or something that didn’t make enough sense. And then an abrupt ending. WTF? What a letdown after such a good movie.