Hope Review: Audacious Alien Thriller is a Bloated Epic with Masterful Action Undermined by Bad CGI
Cannes Film Festival: Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, and Hoyeon lead a coastal Korean town’s fight against giant aliens (Taylor Russell, Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, and Cameron Britton) in the sci-fi film from The Wailing director Na Hong-jin.
by Alex Kaan 18 May 2026
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Like Nicolas Winding Refn with Her Private Hell, Na Hong-jin returns to Cannes with a new genre film exactly a decade after his last premiered at the festival. Expectations are understandably high after Na’s The Wailing, an occult horror thriller about a series of unexplained illnesses and deaths in a remote Korean village. But where his 2016 occult horror thriller The Wailing was a taut, harrowing masterpiece, his follow-up is an unruly, explosive sci-fi action flick—and that’s not a bad thing in itself. The issue is that the messy genre fun is undone by distracting CGI, bizarre pacing, and frustratingly one-note characters.
The film opens as our hero, local policeman Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min), meets a group of hunters, led by his cousin Sung-ki (Zo In-sung), who have discovered a viciously mauled cow carcass with unexplainably large claw marks. Little time is wasted as Sung-ki and his crew venture into the woods to investigate, while Bum-seok returns to town, only to be immediately faced with the alien threat. Thankfully, his colleague Sung-ae (Hoyeon of Squid Game fame) arrives to assist him with a suave, dramatic entrance met with applause at the Cannes premiere and reportedly at the parallel press screening.
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Regardless of its director’s stellar filmography, what makes Hope ultimately so disappointing is its superb first hour: a breathless chase carried by DP Hong Kyung-pyo’s spellbinding tracking shots, Nope composer Michael Abels’ propulsive score, and the gripping performances of leads Hwang Jung-min and Hoyeon. The whole affair unfolds with a Mission Impossible-level tactility, and a sensibility for sci-fi spectacle that recalls both the work of Spielberg and Bong Joon-ho’s The Host. Understandably, the film then slows down as the town recovers from the first attack, but it never quite finds its footing again, with further action scenes becoming fatiguing and repetitive.
To chilling effect, Hope initially hides its monsters, played through motion capture by Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell, and Cameron Britton. Unfortunately, the awkwardly rendered CGI aliens are most frightening when they can’t be seen. The primary issue is that the real-world action is practically realised and captured in beautiful detail by Hong, but the unconvincing, somewhat weightless physicality of the aliens betrays that strength.
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Moreover, Na gradually makes it clear that he’s not especially interested in traditional heroes nor character arcs. Again, for such an outrageous action-centred spectacle, that’s not necessarily a problem, but through drawn-out dialogue-heavy scenes, the film feels uncertain as to whether to give its stars more layers or leave them underdeveloped while undercutting any dramatic moments with a joke. On that subject, Hope is a very funny film, offering a tonal blend that is inspired when it works (in one standout scene, Hoyeon listens to an older man recall the horrifically hilarious ordeal of having to hide from the aliens while recovering from some bad spicy pork) and jarring when it doesn’t.
As the genre-bender abruptly concludes by teasing its already-written sequel, it is a testament to Na’s bold, stylish flair as a filmmaker that a follow-up is still a thoroughly intriguing notion, even though Hope can’t help but stumble under the weight of its sky-high ambition and disappointing sci-fi elements.