Na Hong-jin’s latest feature Hope takes its title from the name of the village in and around which its action is set. Hope is a relatively small coastal community whose population is disproportionately made up of retirees and the elderly, and whose location is near the Demilitarised Zone between a South and North Korea still technically at war – and although the main characters here are cops, hunters or veteran soldiers, one of the running jokes in the film is the sheer number of high-velocity, military-grade weapons to which almost all the resident seems to have illegal access. For, surrounded by mined fields and by ubiquitous signs warning of the need for vigilance against foreign infiltration, Hope is a place on constant alert, full of paranoia and folk armed and ready for any necessary resistance.
Not ready enough, though. For after local police chief Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) has gone out early to examine a cow left gored and dead in the middle of a country road, he returns to find that Hope has become a live war zone, with buildings in ruins, bodies everywhere, and small bands of civilians engaging in high-calibre skirmishes with what is attacking them – and whatever that is, it moves so fast that Bum-seok is always one step behind, seeing not the perpetrator, but only the trail of destruction in its wake. In other words, the first act of Hope is a rapidly unfolding mystery, with a protagonist who, though bumbling and scared, steps in to do what he has to do, and an antagonist which, for all its devastating impact, remains invisible. On a narrative trajectory independent from Bum-seok’s, his fearless cousin Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) and a band of skilled huntsmen also find traces of bloody violence in the fields and the forest, but are unsure what exactly they are tracking, and have no idea that their home town is under attack. This section of the film focuses precisely on what neither Bum-seok nor Sung-ki – nor indeed the viewer – can see, and builds up a great deal of tension over something that all these characters struggle to explain.
In his breakneck investigative pursuit, Bum-seok encounters survivors who speak of a ‘monster’, and eventually he – and we – will see it too, even as Bum-seok is joined by his rookie Im Sung-ae (Jung Ho-yeon) who proves rather more fearless and more competent in taking on this superspeedy, superpowerful creature. Yet as the elderly Mr Hae-sul (Im Hyun-sik) and weird young loner Yang-bae (Eum Moon-suk) step forward with their own separate stories to tell about recent hunting trips, the picture of what is going on gets messier, and it becomes clear that Hope, though not yet lost, is still in grave danger.
Like Na’s feature debut The Chaser (Chugyeokja, 2008), Hope is a frantic chase movie that hits the ground running and does not relent – but rather than being set in the streets of Seoul, it unfolds in a rural border town where the threat of invasion is ever-present, and so opens itself to a Civil War allegory of two opposed forces whose similarities are as striking as their differences. After all, both sides here look after their own, act in rage and revenge, tend to their wounded, and die extremely hard, while also longing for a peaceful existence down the line – and as the monsters are gradually humanised, the humans certainly come with their own monstrousness, and are at times their own worst enemy. This is also, like Na’s The Wailing (2016), about a village beleaguered by the unknown, while its forest scenes come increasingly to resemble John McTiernan’s Predator (1987) – and perhaps in a first for Na, it is often very funny too, as its schlubby characters blunder their way through an ever-escalating situation.
Hope is not just a place, but also a word – and that word faces forward optimistically into the future, dependent on an ability to think – and see – the best ahead. Na’s film ends in medias res and in suspense, with its issues undetermined and its outcomes deferred to an unknown herafter. This might be viewed as cynical sequel-baiting – and Na has mooted the idea of making further films in this weirdly Eighties-looking universe should this one’s box-office performance allow it – but in a way the ending is perfect as is, and requires no follow-up but for the one in the viewer’s imagination. For in a film whose monsters are often invisible, one character near the close talks of faith residing in what is not seen – which seems, among other things, a reflexive comment on our blind faith in a satisfying resolution that has been kept from the screen. There is the sense here, as with Korea’s North and South, that these two opposed groups could be reconciled, if they could just slow down, cool off and find a way to settle their grievances – but that may, given the immense damage that they have done to one another and the implacability consequently accrued at pace, just be wishful thinking. If you want a happy ending for the apocalyptic cliffhangers with which the film concludes, what you need to bring to this incomplete narrative is – precisely – hope.
strap: Na Hong-jin’s barrelling blockbuster has smalltown cops and hunters chasing, and chased by, aggressive intruders along the Korean border.
© Anton Bitel
