Hope is the most expensive South Korean film ever, and the official trailer is here
For more than two decades, South Korean cinema has been on a meteoric rise. From the early 2000s New Wave to Parasite’s historic Oscar sweep, the global phenomenon of Squid Game, and crossover animation hits like K-Pop: Demon Hunters, the industry has consistently punched above its weight. Now it gets its biggest swing yet: Hope, South Korea’s most expensive production ever.
Distributor NEON has released the official trailer for Hope, following a buzzy Cannes premiere that cemented it as one of the year’s most anticipated genre features. True to form for director Na Hong-jin (The Wailing), the footage promises a weird, violent, and visually huge cinematic experience.
Celebrating Na’s return exactly ten years after his acclaimed folk-horror masterpiece The Wailing, Hope finds the auteur in his most ambitious storytelling mode yet. The story follows police chief Bum-seok and officer Sung-ae as they investigate a mysterious creature that has been terrorizing the locals in the remote, rural village of Hope Harbor.
When a group of local hunters, led by Sung-ki, head into the surrounding forest to hunt the beast, they soon realize that they have become the prey. But since this is a Na Hong-jin film, the creature-feature setup is just a Trojan horse. “Not everything is as it seems” in the film, which begins with ignorance and human conflict in a small town and escalates into a “tragedy of cosmic proportions,” reads the official synopsis from NEON.
Na has assembled an international all-star cast for the project, starring Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, and Squid Game breakout Hoyeon alongside Hollywood heavyweights Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fassbender. The scale of the film is enormous, and the cast reflects that. Hope’s official title as the most expensive South Korean film ever made is backed up by a record budget of $46 million (roughly 60 billion Korean won).
Na has long resisted strict genre classification. The Wailing is famous for switching with terrifying ease from a procedural thriller to folkloric horror, a possession nightmare, and a spiritual apocalypse. Hope looks to continue that tonal tightrope walk, smashing elements of the monster movie, alien invasion sci-fi, rural panic, and pyrotechnic action all into a high-budget, VFX-heavy fever dream.
