Hope review: Riotous South Korean creature feature stars Michael Fassbender like you've never seen him before

This article was originally published from the Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2026

Hope, the madcap new movie from South Korean director Na Hong-jin, is probably not the first sort of film you’d imagine when thinking of the prestige of the Cannes Film Festival. Premiering – however improbably – as part of the Competition line-up at this year’s edition, this creature feature is a flawed but utterly breathless piece of action cinema that’s just bonkers enough to make up for its various shortcomings.

Na's previous film was the creeping, occult-themed horror epic The Wailing – released to rave reviews a decade ago – but if you were looking to that effort for clues as to what to expect from his new one, you might want to think again. This is a very different sort of genre picture.

We begin on a country road, where we find a cow that has been horrifically butchered by some unseen but clearly deadly predator. Police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) has been sent to investigate and as he questions a band of slightly hostile locals, a suggestion is put forward that perhaps a tiger was responsible for the nasty incident, although that doesn’t quite seem to add up with the marks on the deceased animal.

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In any case, it doesn’t take long for Bum-seok to rule out this possibility. Whatever this creature is, it is evidently still on the rampage, and the extent of the destruction – which includes cars being sent flying and a growing number of unfortunate people being mauled to death – makes it clear that it’s a fair bit bigger than a mere tiger.

And so begins an electrifying chase as Bum-seok – a man who you sense would be out of his depth even with a threat a few degrees more routine than this – haplessly attempts to track down and shoot at the beast. In doing so, he encounters various locals going about things their own way and not always treating him with much in the way of respect.

This opening section takes up the best part of an hour, and though there are no shortage of highlights later down the line, it's perhaps here where the film’s at its peak. Na’s expert staging of the hunt ensures the epic sequence is laced with near constant tension, while Hwang’s portrayal of the police chief’s bemused terror as the situation lurches increasingly out of hand provides precisely the right amount of comic relief without undercutting the suspense.

It’s just beginning to appear that this might be one of those creature features where the big bad isn’t revealed until the very final act, when that theory is proven untrue in quite spectacular fashion. It’s at this point where the film’s first, and by some distance most major, flaw emerges. The CGI on display is undeniably iffy, and at times there’s the unmistakable feel of a video game in the way the creature moves.

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Quite how far you let this affect the fun is likely to vary wildly from viewer to viewer, but it’s hard to escape the fact that the film’s wow factor could have been amped up a further few notches with markedly improved visual effects and more original creature design. It’s a testament to quite how thrilling the surrounding action is that for many audience members, this aspect will hardly dim the experience at all.

As we move into the second and third acts, there’s intermittently the sense that the film – which runs 2 hours and 40 minutes – is a little overlong, and some of its detours prove more effective than others. But the momentum is never paused for long enough for the well sustained tension to truly let up, and we’re also treated to some humorous asides, including a peculiarly detailed witness statement from an injured man.

The cast for the film – who all fully commit – is mainly Korean, with the main roles alongside the aforementioned Hwang going to Zo In-sung and Squid Game’s Jung Ho-yeon. But there are also key parts for a few major Hollywood stars, notably including married couple Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander. It’s safe to say that both are completely unrecognisable here from anything we’ve seen them in before.

Hope is most certainly a film that will divide viewers, and it’s not especially difficult to find faults – including with some of its baffling hints at a deeper mythology. But as a crazy action spectacle – best enjoyed with an engaged audience – the sheer enjoyable thrill of it all is impossible to deny.

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