HOPE is the new movie from the great South Korean director Na Hong-jin, his first since the horror movie THE WAILING nine years ago. Before that he did two really excellent, bleak crime movies, THE CHASER (2008) and THE YELLOW SEA (2010). This shows some of the detail, personality and mastery of those films, but it’s Na’s version of going into blockbuster mode – a big, action-packed monster movie. And though it shares some of the matter-of-fact horrors of his previous movies (it’s not the anti-septic death and destruction we’re used to from PG-13 Hollywood), it’s pleasant by comparison, because it’s very funny, and even a little warm at times. (Other times it’s mean as hell.)

Oddly, a movie it kept reminding me of was TREMORS, because it’s about the quirky residents of this small, rural area called Hope Harbor gathering their resources to deal with some crazy shit involving a monster. The lead is the police chief, Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min, THE WAILING), who in the opening scene pulls up to the spot where some guys found a dead cow with giant claw marks on her. His second cousin Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung, HUMINT) has gathered some of the boys and their hunting rifles – there’s a great running joke that Bum-seok keeps being surprised by how many illegal guns everybody has – and they tell him about sightings of a tiger in the area. He’s incredulous until they insist and tell him detailed stories about it, but later we find out they were just fucking with him.

That’s one fun thing about the movie: our hero is not an impressive figure, not someone who commands respect. He’s already in over his head before he has any idea what he’s dealing with, awkwardly running around on cement in boots, aiming his rifle like he’s never had to do it in this heavy jacket before.

In a way that’s the best part of the movie, the long JAWS section where we don’t even see the monster, just follow the chief and others as they fan out looking for this thing. He’s making calls trying to get reinforcements, but it’s a tiny department and everybody’s away dealing with a fire in the mountains, so they call everyone who owns a shotgun, and some “union men” and other volunteers form posses who drive around in trucks looking for the thing that did this. To his shock he finds a large hole all the way through a business (that’s some tiger) and much of the town trashed. He hears gunshots and goes toward them.

I love this sense of catching bits of battles from down the block, hearing roars and seeing debris – even entire cars – flying and crashing, but without a view of what’s doing it. He meets up with old retired colonel Ahn Nak-yeon (Lee Sang-hee, CHAWZ) who’s seen the thing and says it looks like “mashed together peas and beans.” A hilariously ambiguous description.

I’ll tell you, when I finally did see the creature it was not at all what I expected. More human (credited as Cameron Britton [THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB], who I believed did mo-cap and the voice). A very weird guy to see on a kaiju rampage. I’ve seen some grumbling about the CG being bad, which I do not agree with, but fair warning that it’s not AVATAR, or even regular not-as-good-as-AVATAR Hollywood level digital FX in terms of realism. There is some cartoonish exaggeration to the movements, maybe some instances of weightlessness. But they kinda look like Ray Harryhausen to me. They have more personality than many movie monsters. I like ‘em.

Just looking human does something interesting for a monster movie – I love how badass rookie Im Sung-ae (Hoyeon, Squid Game) calls it a motherfucker and a sonofabitch and says it won’t get away with it, things you wouldn’t say about, say, Rodan. But the chief, when he gets close enough to get a good shot, looks into its eyes, sees tears, and hesitates.

Hoyeon is really impressive, by the way. She shows up late and steals the movie. I’ve never seen Squid Game so I don’t know if she’s the lead or what, but I guess before that she was from Korea’s Next Top Model. Here she clearly did a bunch of training for the driving and shooting, looking much more capable than her boss (though the gun part doesn’t seem to be of much use against these guys).

Of all the things that are great about this movie, my favorite is the execution of the action. So much high speed, precision driving and drifting, with excellent camerawork attached to the cars, following on other vehicles or drones. It’s novel for a monster movie to have MAD MAX speed, but those animated fuckers can really gallop. I didn’t think about how it was done while watching it, but I’ve read that they really filmed everything at that speed, and behind-the-scenes videos show them filming practical chases with blue or green covered vehicles standing in for the monsters, crashing through obstacles. Yeah, that makes sense. You can feel that it’s real and tactile even though you know that monster isn’t.

These elaborate set pieces would still be fuckin cool but not quite as effective if not for the humanity of all these characters. Too many to keep track of them all or know their names, but so many memorable people: the dipshit carpenter Yang-bae (Eum Moon-suk, THE ROUNDUP), who has a dead alien baby in his freezer and doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal, just wants to sell it for $800, the doctor casually covered in blood, the old lady who offers the chief a raw potato for sustenance, the old man Mr. Hae-sul (Im Hyun-sik, 200 POUNDS BEAUTY) who saw aliens in the woods when he was taking a dump.

I love the gradual way the alien situation escalates. There is a very long, thrilling hunt to kill the thing, they think they’re in the epilogue now, but Mr. Hae-sul tells Sung-ae about seeing three of them. (And on screen in his flashback we see four!) She rushes to warn the chief, by which time he’s already found out about the frozen baby and Sung-ki has found three others that don’t at all look like the three Hae-sul is talking about. There are some unreliable narrator ways to interpret this, but otherwise it seems like none of our heroes ever have a full picture of what they’re dealing with.

I personally was surprised that what they’re dealing with includes (CASTING SPOILER THAT’S ON THE POSTER BUT I DIDN’T LOOK AT THE POSTER THAT CLOSELY) aliens played by Michael Fassbender (KNEECAP), Alicia Vikander (TOMB RAIDER) and Taylor Russell (BONES AND ALL). The Fassbender one sort of looks like him (in one form) and has his voice (in an alien language), but I was surprised again to see in the behind-the-scenes videos that he also did mo-cap action running around with arm extensions. Reportedly they were all fans of THE WAILING and excited to work with Na.

I knew about this movie and thought it would be one of my lonely weekday matinees, like when I saw TOXIC or BLADES OF THE GUARDIANS: WIND RISES IN THE DESERT or LEGENDS OF THE CONDOR HEROES: THE GALLANTS or SHADOW or MASTER Z: THE IP MAN LEGACY or KILL or TRAIN TO BUSAN PRESENTS PENINSULA – imported movies that seem like events to me but hardly anybody I talk to goes to see them or seems very aware of them, if at all. (I can’t include TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN on the list, because weirdly a bunch of my friends went to that one.) But NEON is distributing HOPE in the U.S. and has created real awareness. I knew that because my sister took her family to see it on her birthday, and because they booked it at the SIFF Downtown (formerly Cinerama). So I took Mrs. Vern and she loved it too.

The wide release might also create expectations of being more mainstream than it is. I’ve heard “it’s too long” even though it’s the same runtime as Na’s last movie and is paced approximately three times faster. That said, I love that it’s allowed to linger on occasion – like the opening scene of gawking at the dead cow. I’m old fashioned but I like that there are still movies designed to be the main event of your day and not just a thing you squeeze in between other bullshit.

I had heard some vague things from early reactions to the movie, and I thought they said the last hour wasn’t as good. So I was waiting for some huge, audacious shift that I may or may not be on board with, and the 156 minutes flew by so fast I wasn’t expecting it to end when it did. When the credits roll it has just confirmed that these monsters they’ve been chasing and being chased by are intelligent beings who speak and have culture and love and loss and a goal to achieve. Turns out Na has already written a sequel he hopes to do about that, but also it would be pretty funny just to throw that in at the end and let us imagine it. (To be honest I suspect a movie centering those characters more wouldn’t be as good as this!)

I guess that must be the part I heard would be divisive, but I don’t know. I can only imagine laughing it off, not hating it. Just a little goofy shit at the end of one of the year’s most effective and distinctive thrill rides. I think HOPE is something special. (And I hope Na’s next movie doesn’t take as long.)