Hope Review: Hwang Jung-Min & Hoyeon Battle Killer Aliens — Played By Michael Fassbender & Alicia Vikander — In Bonkers Sci-Fi Epic

Hope (NC16)

Starring Hwang Jung-min, Hoyeon, Zo In-sung, Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell

Directed by Na Hong-jin

South Korean director Na Hong-jin is great in making movies about demons.

Aliens? Maybe not so great.

In 2016’s The Wailing, he helmed a terrific horror thriller so unsettling and gripping in its shaman-based roots that it was genuinely frightening. The more it drew you in, the more it scared you.

Here, in Hope, you get none of those subtle, quaint Asian atmospherics because this unclear, messy sci-fi flick looks and plays like a crazy, blunt American-style pile-on. Specifically, the shoot-em-to-hell yahoo-cowboy kind which makes you worry about insurance coverage for murdered cows and exhausted horses.

The more this show goes on in its overlong 156-minute runtime, the more you wonder what the heck it’s about.

Top marks, though, to the pulsating music propelling the relentless, near-indestructible aliens rampaging as tall, super-strong, super-fast humanoid athletes with fab abs. It makes this exciting adrenaline rush feel like Jaws tearing down the road. Think X-Men's the Beast charging like a rabid Rottweiler on steroids.

Now, is this a homage to Steven Spielberg by way of Olympic-level horse sprints, Predator-inspired jungle hunts and a Trump-feverish wipe-out-all-foreigners war pic?

Where, in its really good first third before the somewhat corny alien reveal, the main dude — undermanned, overwhelmed police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min from The Wailing) — darts in and out of the alleyways of a remote border village named Hope Harbour. He conducts a search-and-destroy mission like it's a war zone with a clueless face and a shotgun.

Aiding him are grenade launcher-toting female rookie cop, Sung-ae (Squid Game’s Hoyeon), and a comic-relief old guy (Lee Sang-hee) who’s armed with useless arrows. Meanwhile, virtually in a separate movie, the chief’s hunter-cousin, Sung-ki (Moving’s Zo In-sung), ventures into a vast wooded forest — Romania pretending to be Korea – with his band of weaponised good old boys slated to be dead meat for the otherworldly visitors they’re tracking.

You know these poor saps are cooked because the monsters include CGI-ed versions of Michael Fassbender and real missus Alicia Vikander. And it’s never a good idea to mess with a ferocious, naked, serious-thespian ang moh couple looking like homicidal eco-warriors speaking a Star Trek language with twigs sticking out of their bods. They fling their pursuers high across the trees as if they’re Superman. Absurdly, some of those fellas survive as though they’re Superman too.

Okay, this place is right near the high-alert Demilitarised Zone with signboards warning folks about “wild animals, minefields and spies”. But for the entire duration, there’s no SK counter-invasion military force coming to the rescue? Someone mentions something about wildfires preventing this. Utter poppycock.

I mean, surely this plot must be referencing North Korean enemy aliens, right? As people keep yapping here about the situation — “This doesn't make sense”. Just saying.

Anyway, the town is in ruins with smashed bodies strewn around in what looks like a huge, too perfectly staged outdoor set. The cop hears fearsome growls emanating from beyond the rooftops while running to investigate like a headless chicken. With gung-ho doomed militias armed with government-banned automatic weapons (Korean in-joke here) careening back and forth in trucks shooting wildly at whatever the hell’s out there.

It's the film’s best segment. Where the unknown totally beats the known. Before things turn into full-on action mode when we, like Chief Bum-seok, finally get to see the, well, not very convincing, sorta fakey aliens. One pops up looking like a long-haired rockstar escapee from Attack On Titan.

Director Na states in the production notes that “Ultimately, what this film aims to convey is that all the world’s tragedies stem from misunderstandings.”

His aliens are a protective spaceship-travelling family unit that’s just like us humans. But with tougher skin and deadlier claws.

“I think it was crying,” Bum-seok describes the invader he literally shoots to kingdom come in the one bit of wild-east Asian sensitivity that could’ve turned this pic into a worthy creature-feature equivalent of The Wailing.

Because it’s too easy to misunderstand Na’s noble ambition here since we’re basically over-bombarded by the mind-numbing wild-west action which, for the record, is awesome next-level stuff that’s worth the ticket.

In the big, prolonged, final battle between Man and Monster with stunts that stun when the aliens chase the cops in a speeding car and Sung-ki on a galloping horse, everything reaches an insanity level which makes this flick look like a live-action version of, say, a coyote going like a runaway train after a roadrunner.

Coincidentally, that very same cartoon, Coyote vs. Acme, is also in our cinemas right now.

Making this kinda a two-fer in crazy chase-y times.

Beep beep. (3/5 stars) out in cinemas

Photo: Clover Films