SPOILER ALERT
The monsters are Americans.
Last month a film called Hope hit the theaters and it’s gotten mixed reviews. I’ll give you the three sentence synopsis and a three sentence explanation of what’s wrong with the movie first, but then we really need to talk about the meta, because this is definitely one of those cases where the discussion about the movie is more interesting than the movie itself.
The plot: A small town defends itself from rampaging monsters with a third act plot twist that the monsters are just defending themselves from the humans. No offense but it sounds like some blap-blap gobbledygook to me.
The review: So look, this is a Korean movie, and some amount of cultural confusion is to be expected. But there are still universal aspects of the human condition that translate through cinema. You’ve got to show some restraint at times. You can’t turn the dramatic reveal of a rising threat into an extended poop joke. Giving one or two human characters iron-clad plot-armor by letting them shake-off Marvel superhero levels of damage drains the tension. If you’ve got a mukbang fetish then the eating interlude should be as subtle and easily ignored as dirty feet in a Tarantino movie rather than an extended five-minute sequence at the mid-point of the movie. Your pay-offs need set-ups and your set-ups need payoffs. This movie fails on so many levels, it makes one weep for the skilled film production of an American company and those are so deep in the sewer these days I can’t believe I just wrote that. This is a deeply flawed movie that just can’t get out of it’s own way.
Anyway, enough about the plot and technical merits, now we need to talk about the things nobody else is talking about. Remember how I teased you with the idea the monster are Americans? (Take note, director Na Hong-jin, this is how you set and payoff.) In the last few minutes of the movie we learn that the monsters are involved in an interstellar war and this whole massive action event in small town Korea is small potatoes compared to what’s really going on out there. All the struggles and travails of the characters on screen are minor dramas of people caught up in a conflict beyond their understanding. Okay, so maybe the aliens are Mongols or Japanese and Chinese. Whatever, it’s very reminiscent of Godzilla as the personification of nuclear bombs. And that’s interesting.
But I can’t find anyone else talking about it.
The other meta-conversation we need to have is the one where we point at mainstream reviewers and laugh. Because the movie is such a contorted and bombastic cacophony of noise and drang, and because so much of what’s shown is only half-explained or half-hinted at, you’re probably going to be tempted to do some internet research and see what other people have cobbled together by way of explanation. And what you find there is a whole lot of people who know deep down that it’s a hot mess, but just can’t bring themselves to admit it because of their own servile nature.
The central theme of the movie is that violence is the result of misunderstanding, and that if we all just took a little time to understand each other and accept each other then we could stand on a hill singing love songs about buying each other sugary sodas. Also, it’s about how the people you think are the good guys are secretly the bad guys and the people who are ugly deformed freaks that killed massive numbers of your friends and family are just misunderstood. Which is exactly the sort of take you’d expect from the ugly deformed freaks who write film reviews for mainstream media, and it tells you a whole lot more about them than it does the movie.
Anyway, it’s not good, and it’s not too smart for most people to handle. It’s schizophrenic in that it can’t decide what it really wants to be until the last few minutes and by then it’s way too late. But it’s probably not too late for you. If you haven’t already, give this one a miss.