Na Hong-jin spent a decade away from features and came back with a reported $46 million behind him. Hope, his first film since The Wailing, is set to reach Digital HD on October 13, four weeks after NEON opened it in 1,500 North American theaters.
One caveat on the date. NEON has not issued a formal digital announcement, so October 13 comes off the Amazon and iTunes listings rather than a press release, and a disc release has not been dated at all.
The Wailing Director Went Much Bigger
The Wailing was a rural police procedural that curdled into a possession nightmare over two and a half hours, and it has held its place as the high-water mark for Korean horror ever since. Hope keeps the rural setting and swaps the demon for something that arrives from outside. A police chief played by Hwang Jung-min works the case in a village called Hope Harbor while a hunting party led by Zo In-sung goes after the creature, and the hunt turns around on them.
Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander are in the cast, their first screen pairing since The Light Between Oceans in 2016. Jung Ho-yeon, Taylor Russell and Cameron Britton are in it as well. That is an unusual roster for a Korean genre production, and it is the clearest sign of what the budget was actually for.
Na Hong-jin has made four features in eighteen years. The Chaser in 2008 and The Yellow Sea in 2010 built him a reputation for thrillers that run on exhaustion rather than cleverness, and The Wailing pushed that into something closer to dread. A creature picture is a real departure for him, and it is the first time he has worked at a scale where the money is visible on screen.
The Money Went Home Before the Movie Did
The film premiered in competition at Cannes in May, opened in Korea on July 15 to the country’s biggest debut of the year, and reached American theaters on September 9. Worldwide grosses have been tracking around $45 million, most of it from the Korean run, which puts the film roughly level with what it cost to make.
Critics came down at 78 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with the production design taking most of the praise and the visual effects taking most of the complaints. The effects argument is the one to watch at home, because a creature that reads as rubbery in a theater often reads as deliberate on a television, and Na Hong-jin has never been a filmmaker who chases photoreal for its own sake.
NEON has not said whether a streaming home follows the rental window. For a film that made most of its money in one country, October 13 is when everyone else finally gets a turn at it.
