Parents' Guide to Hope

This South Korean monster movie is a mix of exhilarating, kinetic filmmaking; wry comedy; and confusing, ineffective storytelling choices—fortunately, the former two win out by a whisker. Hope is the follow-up to South Korean filmmaker Na Hong-jin's successful, powerful horror movie The Wailing, but, aside from daunting running times and slow-burn setups, the two movies are fairly different. The first hour of Hope is steeped in mystery and tension, as characters try to find out what they're up against. Viewers also get to know the main characters and are introduced to the movie's sly, subtle sense of humor (there are even brief meta-jokes about movie acting). The frankly astonishing production design involves an entire town, as well as ample, carefully arranged scenes of utter destruction; it seems as if something huge charged through a space in a specific direction. The camerawork is fast and fluid, gliding alongside speeding cars or running figures as if detached from the laws of gravity. A climactic chase scene along a mountain road involving a car, a horse, and a galloping monster is truly amazing.

Then, the story kicks in. Na tries to create a kind of lore around the creatures (two are played via motion capture by Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender) that's as nonsensical as it is dull. There are flat-out goofs and flubs, as if the filmmakers ran out of time during editing. (The sun seems to be setting at one point, and a character actually says, "we're losing light," but then it gets bright again.) Things leave off unsatisfactorily, possibly suggesting the story is "to be continued"—but, then again, maybe not. To top it all off, the CG effects appear cheap, rubbery, and stiff. All of that aside, however, Hope has quite a bit of good stuff going for it, ultimately making it worth seeing.