Eerie silence hangs over mangled bodies and buildings between flash cuts to a mysterious, galloping beast on the rampage — so begins the latest official trailer for cult Korean director Na Hong-jin‘s Hope. The trailer finds the film’s protagonists alternately hunting or fleeing the vicious creature — or creatures — through a tattered town known as Hope Harbor, a remote coastal village near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in South Korea. Snippets near the end of the roughly two-minute spot reveal an alien spacecraft streaking through the sky, laying bare that this is a rare, big-budget Korean sci-fi spectacle, not just another white-knuckle action freakout from the director of The Chaser and The Wailing. (See the full trailer below.)
The spot debuted Thursday, ahead of a two-stage rollout: Plus M Entertainment opens Hope in South Korean cinemas on July 15, before Neon launches the film exclusively in North American theaters on Sept. 9.
Hope — the auteur’s first feature in roughly a decade — world premiered in competition at Cannes in May, drawing a six-minute standing ovation and a wave of sharply divided critical reaction, ranging from rapture to some notes of bafflement.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s chief film critic David Rooney weighed in firmly on the rapturous side, hailing the film as a “rip-roaring sci-fi creature feature” that “has instant cult classic written all over it.”
