Eerie silence hangs over mangled bodies and buildings between flash cuts to a mysterious, galloping beast on the rampage — so begins the latest official trailer for cult Korean director Na Hong-jin‘s Hope. The trailer finds the film’s protagonists alternately hunting or fleeing the vicious creature — or creatures — through a tattered town known as Hope Harbor, a remote coastal village near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in South Korea. Snippets near the end of the roughly two-minute spot reveal an alien spacecraft streaking through the sky, laying bare that this is a rare, big-budget Korean sci-fi spectacle, not just another white-knuckle action freakout from the director of The Chaser and The Wailing. (See the full trailer below.)
The spot debuted Thursday, ahead of a two-stage rollout: Plus M Entertainment opens Hope in South Korean cinemas on July 15, before Neon launches the film exclusively in North American theaters on Sept. 9.
Hope — the auteur’s first feature in roughly a decade — world premiered in competition at Cannes in May, drawing a six-minute standing ovation and a wave of sharply divided critical reaction, ranging from rapture to some notes of bafflement.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s chief film critic David Rooney weighed in firmly on the rapturous side, hailing the film as a “rip-roaring sci-fi creature feature” that “has instant cult classic written all over it.”
“It’s a great feeling to know from a movie’s first frames that you’re in the hands of an assured genre auteur,” Rooney wrote. “The rare action thriller that takes place almost entirely in broad daylight, Hope pulls you in immediately with its virtuoso camerawork, pulse-pounding score, adrenalized pacing and sharply drawn characters.”
Set in the fictional border town of Hope Harbor, the film follows police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) and officer Sung-ae (Hoyeon) as they hunt the mysterious creature laying waste to their village, while a band of local hunters led by Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) tracks the beast through the surrounding forest, only to become its prey. What begins as misjudgment, the official synopsis teases, spirals through human conflict into tragedy on a cosmic scale.
The Korean ensemble — including Hwang, reuniting with Na after The Wailing, and Squid Game breakout Hoyeon — is rounded out by several high-profile Hollywood names, with Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell and Cameron Britton turning up in minor but surprising supporting parts. Rooney singled out Hoyeon in particular, calling the model-turned-actress “a hoot in her first feature role, from her action moves to her comic timing.”
Na made his name on a trio of stunning genre spectacles — the crime thrillers The Chaser and The Yellow Sea and the 2016 horror hit The Wailing — and reunites here with his Wailing cinematographer, Hong Kyung-pyo, a revered figure in the Korean industry whose other credits include Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite and Lee Chang-dong’s Burning. The score is by Michael Abels, the composer behind Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Nope.
Na has conceived Hope as the first chapter of a potential franchise — and international buyers appear on board. Korean seller Plus M pre-sold the film to roughly 200 territories out of Cannes, a record for a Korean title, with the deals, per Plus M, recouping nearly half of the movie’s net production budget ahead of release.
