South Korean village Hope Harbour is cut off from the outside world after fires sever all communication methods. When a mysterious creature attacks, it is down to the police chief, Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) and his deputy, Im Sung-ae (Jung Ho-yeon) to defend the town.
The first hour of Hope is a blast. It is practically one extended action scene, with tension built by delaying the reveal of the monster and the appearance of Ho-yeon elevates it further. It gets bogged down a little after that as we start following other groups tracking the beast. Seeing that there are numerous monsters and hearing them talk to each other was a terrible choice as it highlights the bad CGI and adds nothing to the story, despite having the likes of Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander play them.
But the second half of Na Hong-jin’s movie does contain a brilliant chase scene with a highly amusing pay off and a funny extended anecdote. A hard film to score but the good outweighs the bad.
Rating: 6 out of 10