'Hope' Review: Na Hong-jin's Blockbuster Creature Feature Is Undone by a Terrible Script and Some of the Worst CGI Since 'The Mummy Returns'

Hope is reportedly Korea’s most expensive movie, with a rumored budget of ₩50 billion. The film runs 160 minutes and is framed as a bumpkins-versus-monsters saga that sustains creative momentum for only about 45 minutes. Creature effects are described as among the worst, and CGI is criticized despite modern expectations. The movie is said to open with intense excitement, including a dead cow in the road, and to initially deliver promise comparable to earlier works. The early portion is portrayed as thrilling and operatic, but the remainder is described as disappointing, draining, and leaving viewers feeling foolish for expecting a better outcome.

"Exact numbers have yet to be confirmed, but Na Hong-jin's "Hope" is reportedly the most expensive movie ever made in Korea, with a rumored budget of ₩50 billion (which only translates to about $33 million USD). Whatever this 160-minute blockbuster actually cost, it was both way too much and not nearly enough - too much for a trite and tedious bumpkins vs. monsters saga that only has the creative propulsion to sustain itself for about 45 minutes, and not enough to spare it from some of the worst creature effects this side of the Syfy Channel or "The Mummy Returns.""

"Of course, it's fitting that a contemporary movie called "Hope" should kick off with an unparalleled jolt of excitement, only to fade so fast - and with such soul-sucking force - that you ultimately feel like an idiot for ever believing in a better outcome. But in my defense, and possibly your own some day, the first third of Na's latest feature delivers on every scrap of scattered promise that he offered with "The Wailing," "The Yellow Sea," and "The Chaser" before it."

"Imagine if the run for your lives! havoc unleashed in "The Host" or "The War of the Worlds" was stretched out for the better part of an hour and shot with the cartoonishly operatic spectacle of the Paris sequence from "Mission: Impossible - Fallout." Now imagine how bad the rest of "Hope" must be for a movie that starts like that to become such a massive disappointment by the end."

"It begins with a dead cow in the middle of the road. That would be enough to pass for a big news day in the backwater port town of Hope (which is close enough to the DMZ to be surrounded by landmines and festooned with posters warning peo"

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