Hope

On the outskirts of a small South Korean town called Hope, a group of hunters come across the badly mauled corpse of a cow. The bovine victim is like the crab eaten arm in Jaws (1974), the first clue that something is out there, a monster endangering the community The first hour of the film is essentially a chase scene of pure action cinema. Unrelenting, pounding and beautifully filmed by Parasite (2019) and Burning (2018) cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, the light of early morning slanting through car windows as the chase tears through different environments. The sheen of peak Steven Spielberg is blended with the dynamism of George Miller throughout the film. As the mystery is revealed, the scale of the film gets bigger and bigger, barmier and barmier, and the monsters themselves, performed via mo-cap by Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender, are revealed as a CGI creation of a convincingness that varies. Some larger plot is at hand, presumably setting up a sequel which Na Hong-jin has already written.-BFI “The jaw-dropping scale of it all puts most blockbusters to shame.”-Little White Lies