Na Hong-jin’s Hope, a blood-soaked, alien-invasion blockbuster set near the Korean Demilitarized Zone, stormed the Palais des Festivals on Sunday night and pulled a six-minute standing ovation at its Cannes world premiere — the most sustained audience reaction of any competition film at this year’s festival. The screening drew Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell, and Hoyeon Jung to the red carpet alongside Korean leads Hwang Jung-min and Zo In-sung.
Directed by Na Hong-jin, the big-budget epic combined a gritty survival story with original sci-fi mythology set in a sleepy South Korean mountain village, and seemed to serve a bit of everything. The film’s first 40 minutes deliver what feels like a continuous cut of increasingly bloody action, climaxing in the leveling of an entire town, as potty-mouthed police officers and hill people try to cope with a mysterious creature that has ripped their community to shreds.
The 2-hour-40-minute film out-Hollywoods anything of its kind made by Hollywood, and Cannes not only placed it in the official selection but in competition — a rare distinction for a genre film of this scale. The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney called it “a wildly entertaining assault of turbo-charged thrills.” Critical opinion divided sharply from there. IndieWire panned the film’s CGI as among the worst creature effects seen at the festival, arguing its creative propulsion runs dry after the first 45 minutes. One critic described leaving the Palais “completely dazed — not emotionally devastated, not intellectually challenged — just genuinely wondering what Na Hong-jin had just unleashed,” adding that the reaction in the room was “a mixture of confusion, laughter, irritation, and genuine awe.”
The film marks Hong-jin’s fourth appearance at Cannes but his first in competition. He first came to the festival in 2008 with The Chaser, returned with The Yellow Sea in Un Certain Regard in 2011, and screened The Wailing out of competition in 2016. Hope also became the first South Korean film to compete for the Palme d’Or since Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave in 2022.
Neon — currently on a run of six consecutive Palme d’Or winners — acquired North American, U.K., and Australian rights ahead of the premiere, with Mubi taking Latin America, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Turkey. Reports suggest the film is the most expensive Korean production ever made, with a rumored budget of around ₩50 billion, approximately $33 million USD.
