Over the course of his first three feature films (“The Chaser,” “The Yellow Sea,” and “The Wailing”), Na Hong-jin has established himself as one of South Korea’s most exciting film directors. That momentum afforded him the opportunity to make the biggest film of his career — and reportedly the most expensive movie ever filmed in South Korea — for his first English-language feature, “Hope.”

The film, which is said to have cost ₩50 billion (about $33 million USD), was one of the most highly anticipated premieres of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered in competition. And while reviews were mixed, it’s the kind of polarizing auteur project that every cinephile will want to have a strong opinion on.

“The first third of Na’s latest feature delivers on every scrap of scattered promise that he offered with ‘The Wailing,’ ‘The Yellow Sea,’ and ‘The Chaser’ before it. Imagine if the run for your lives! havoc unleashed in ‘The Host’ or ‘The War of the Worlds’ was stretched out for the better part of an hour and shot with the cartoonishly operatic spectacle of the Paris sequence from ‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout,'” IndieWire’s David Ehrlich wrote in his Cannes review. “Now imagine how bad the rest of ‘Hope’ must be for a movie that starts like that to become such a massive disappointment by the end.”

“Hope” stars Hwang Jung-Min, Zo In-Sung, Hoyeon, Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fassbender. 

An official synopsis for the film reads: “In the remote South Korean village of Hope Harbor, police outpost chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) and officer Sung-ae (Hoyeon) are called to find a mysterious creature that has wreaked havoc on the village. In the nearby forest, a coterie of local hunters, including Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) set out to track the beast and find themselves hunted instead. But all is not as it seems, and perceptions can be misleading. What begins as ignorance plants the seed of disaster, escalating through human conflict into a tragedy of cosmic proportions.”

Neon is set to release “Hope” in American theaters on Wednesday, September 9. You can watch the film’s first trailer below.