Hope

Bluesky

Hope Harbor is a small town. Its distance from the big city suggests it's on the North Eastern coast, bound by the sea, a vast swathe of National Park, and the Demilitarized Zone. North enough that some of North Korea is south of it, like a militarised Berwick Upon Tweed. Demographically similar too, full of the retired, though sufficiently heavily armed that the denizens of Sandford would be envious. Though their rural idyll is going to be punctured, first by cattle mutilation and then by the cattle mutilator.

That's overly simple, of course, for a film that's as intent on turning dials to 11 as it is on throwing ideas at the screen to see what sticks. Its awareness and nods to various outposts of multiple franchises notwithstanding, some of its scale and scope means it struggles with an eternal problem of genre - in conjuring a world (or worlds) with questions unanswered where is the line between hinting at more and missing pieces?

Possibly in a freezer. Probably in the forest. Almost certainly in the ever expanding ruins that were once the winding streets. Definitely in the stars. Hope Harbor's immediate neighbours are hills and trees, but the horizon conceals a variety of imminent threats. Forest fires in the region have tied up most official resources. Topography (and the era) mean that calls for help struggle to reach anyone else. The traditional architecture of the village might be festooned with neon signs, occupied by American imports like M-16s and Chevrolets, but the traditional nature of the story is similarly equipped. Small town is threatened. Chaos ensues.

And what chaos! Na Hong-Jin's Yellow Sea was a visceral thriller, and his later works have moved in more fantastical directions. The essence of Hope is not perhaps in its shootouts or its car chases, nor its successive ambushes, the tension of uncrossed thresholds, but in prolonged escalation. Its protagonists might hope things will get better, but that's not the most entertaining direction of travel.

There are some obvious comparisons, too many to make in truth, but Tremors is among them. Na Hong-jin's features tend to be around two and a half hours and this is no exception. That gives it scale to breathe in places, moments of respite to punctuate the ever-evolving action, but it also drags in places. Others have explored similar situations at more of a clip, though perhaps with fewer magazines of ammunition expended. That's more than a shot in the dark, any number of films have flung more lead than The Thing but even Predator would envy the frequency with which their equivalents in Hope can reload. It has the air of works like Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets but unlike that (and Eternals) its sprawling isn't from trying to capture every element of an adapted work.

Unless, of course, we treat the thing adapted not as a single text but genre. Small towns resisting invaders is independent of the nature of the threat, from Vikings to aliens to both. The local authorities, Hwang Jung-min's police 'chief' and Hoyeon as a new recruit, are outnumbered, but progressively less outgunned. They join a long list of put-upon local law enforcement facing monsters, a litany that runs from Earp to Brody and beyond.

Long lists also seem a key structural element of the script. There's always something else happening, and while they make sense as a whole there's a whole lot of them. Among efficiencies, the charm of visual effects that form another kind of period detail is one of many things I want to highlight. It's possible that another few million and pursuit of yet more tax credits would have made them look more realistic, in as much as that matters when we've got aliens in play among some gooey practical effects. It works well without, even because of their stylisation. There's any number of moments that recall the survival horror videogame genre, including works like Resident Evil. Every fumbled reload and escalatory re-arming works towards a constant air of tension, but those games often rely on cut-scenes and Hope could perhaps have done with having scenes cut.

Except, and here I worry about churlishness, too much of a good thing is hardly grounds for complaint. Hope's scale and scope and delightful detail make it a banquet, if not an all-you-can-eat buffet. A lot of it is familiar, and to extend the metaphor little seems reheated, though there is a lot of it. That it's a single film rather than a series is maybe what makes it a little hard to swallow. For all its quality, and there's plenty, ambition means that Hope may have bitten off a little more than it can chew.

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