The Cannes Film Festival has long been home to the most prestigious premieres in a given film year, and in the last decade, has become increasingly more vital in steering the Academy Awards’ Best Picture race. The 2026 competition is now underway with movies that should get deep under your skin later this year: I truly can’t wait for Pawel Pawlikoski’s Fatherland to gift us another spectacular Sandra Hüller performance, and the thought of James Gray and Adam Driver commanding awards season with the new Queens-set thriller Paper Tiger sounds like a dream.
But I’m glad Cannes also remains a forum for every kind of international artistic offering — including big, loud, VFX-laden genre movies. And this year’s winner in that regard sounds like Hope.
Hope drops viewers into Hope Harbor, a remote South Korean town near the DMZ where a mutilated cow and a missing communications network send local law enforcement quickly spiraling. Turns out… they’re on the brink of an apocalypse. With emergency reinforcements pulled away to fight nearby wildfires, police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) and rookie officer Sung-ae (Squid Game‘s Hoyeon) are left to protect a town populated mostly by elderly residents while local hunter Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) and his crew head into the mountains to track what they think is a wild animal. Not totally wrong!
Written and directed by Na Hong-jin, whose horror epic The Wailing was one of the best movies of 2019, the debut trailer for Hope (watch it above) teases out a creature feature that looks to get bigger and bigger as it rolls along. Not as featured in this first look from Neon, which will distribute the movie this fall: mysterious figures played by Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Taylor Russell.
Critics who saw Hope out of Cannes this past weekend sounded blown back in their seats. Multiple reviews reached for Mad Max: Fury Road comparisons to describe the film’s relentless momentum. Next Best Picture called it “a cross between Bong Joon-Ho’s The Host” and George Miller’s non-stop chase movie, with Na Hong-jin delivering “balls-to-the-walls, insane, adrenaline-pumping thrill ride.” The Hollywood Reporter described the film as “a superbly sustained pedal-to-the-metal experience,” while ScreenDaily dubbed it a “slaughterfest” that “barely lets up on its breathless pace.” Even critics mixed on the film’s length or visual effects seemed swept up in the chaos: Variety called the opening hour “wildly entertaining” and praised its “breakneck, bananas tempo.”
Beyond the sheer sensory overload, critics were especially taken by the craftsmanship powering the mayhem. Variety praised Na’s “breathtakingly elegant action moviemaking,” singling out cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo’s camera as moving with “insolent grace.” THR called the camerawork “a marvel of kinetic energy,” praising the “breathtaking pans and tracking sequences” and Michael Abels’ “all-timer” score. Deadline went even bigger, arguing the film “out-Hollywoods anything of its kind made by Hollywood,” while highlighting its “splendid cinematography,” “ace visual effects,” and “impressive stunt coordination.” Inject this into my veins right now.
The biggest naysayer is Indiewire’s David Ehrlich, whose interest in the movie hit a wall at the 45-minute mark thanks to “some of the worst creature effects this side of the Syfy Channel or The Mummy Returns.” From his point of view, “Na can only keep the momentum going for a few minutes before the rest of the movie starts to become as unimaginative as its monster.” His backhand praise: “It’s clear that something went terribly wrong in the making of this movie, but the worst part about it is how much goes ecstatically right before the wheels fall off.” As someone who has podcasted every week with Mr. Ehrlich for nearly 15 years, I am going to admit he might be seeing this one with clearer eyes but also he has little taste for what for the “nerd-ass shit” I will often cheer for. So mileage on Hope may vary.
Na may not hit the same highs with Hope as he did with The Wailing, but boy, it sounds like he swung. In a summer full of ’80s nostalgia blockbusters and live-action Disney remakes, the fall can’t come quickly enough.
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