Hope

SOMETHING HAS COME TO HOPE

The first problem is the creature.

The second is what everyone decides to do about it.

In Na Hong-jin's Hope, something unknown appears near a remote South Korean community called Hope Harbor.

Then the attacks begin.

Police outpost chief Bum-seok, played by Hwang Jung-min, and officer Sung-ae, played by Hoyeon, are left trying to protect the village while reinforcements have been diverted to fight wildfires and communications have been cut.

In the mountains, Sung-ki, played by Zo In-sung, joins a group of locals hunting the mysterious beast.

Except the hunt doesn't go as planned.

They become the hunted.

That's where Hope begins.

Where it goes is considerably larger.

The movie is the first feature Na Hong-jin has directed since The Wailing, his 2016 horror film that turned uncertainty itself into something terrifying.

Ten years later, uncertainty is still everywhere.

Only the scale has changed.

Na has explained that the idea for Hope first came to him in 2017, beginning with an image of somebody watching television news inside a small restaurant in Seoul. He developed the idea and had a first draft by 2018. 

What emerged from that image became an enormous science-fiction production.

But Na's starting point remains remarkably small.

One community.

One encounter.

One decision.

Then another.

In a July interview, Na explained that the film follows how a seemingly trivial act in a tiny town can grow into something unimaginably destructive.

His concern wasn't simply that somebody deliberately does something evil.

It's that catastrophe doesn't necessarily require evil intentions.

Sometimes people only need to misunderstand what is happening. 

That idea is written directly into Cannes' official description of the movie:

“What begins as ignorance plants the seed of disaster.”

And Hope keeps watering that seed.

The human side of the story is led by Hwang Jung-min as Bum-seok, Hoyeon as Sung-ae, and Zo In-sung as Sung-ki.

But they're only one side of an unusually international cast.

Michael Fassbender plays Ma'veyyo.

Alicia Vikander plays J'aur.

Taylor Russell plays Ai'dovor.

Cameron Britton plays Va'migere.

Those character assignments aren't guesses based on reviews—they're explicitly listed by the Festival de Cannes. 

Behind the camera, Na assembled an equally formidable crew.

Hong Kyung-pyo, whose credits include Parasite and Snowpiercer, served as cinematographer.

Michael Abels, the composer behind Get Out, Us and Nope, composed the score.

Kim Sun-min edited the film, Lee Hwokyoung handled production design, and Kim Changsub served as sound designer. 

Na didn't want dialogue carrying everything.

He has said that the action sequences themselves needed to communicate the story—that viewers should be able to understand what the characters are thinking and feeling through movement and action, rather than having the movie constantly explain itself. 

That's appropriate for a story about people who don't fully understand what they're looking at.

Because Hope keeps returning to perception.

Who is dangerous?

Who is afraid?

Who attacked first?

And what happens when somebody answers one of those questions incorrectly?

The film premiered in Competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where Na returned to the festival with his largest production yet. 

It then opened in South Korea on July 15 before beginning its international rollout.

For North America, NEON scheduled special early-access screenings on September 7 across 175 premium-format theaters before launching the film wide on September 9. 

Today, September 12, it's still very much a theatrical movie.

Current listings show it playing across U.S. theaters, including multiple daily screenings. 

And at 160 minutes, Na isn't exactly sneaking back into cinemas.

He's arriving with a monster movie big enough to swallow an afternoon.

But underneath all that scale is an idea small enough to fit inside a village:

People encounter something they don't understand.

They decide what it must be.

Then they act.

And once everybody starts acting on what they think they know, the creature isn't the only thing capable of causing destruction.

That's what makes the title increasingly strange.

The town is called Hope.

The movie is called Hope.

But Na Hong-jin has built a story around what happens when certainty outruns understanding.

Something has come to Hope.

And nobody knows what it means yet.