Hope

Hope. You know. Hope! Goes with Change! Sometimes it floats. Sometimes it springs. It just sings of coziness and schmaltzy drama and all kinds of crap like that.

In this case, it's a Korean monster/alien invasion movie about a washed-up cop in a washed-up town that's been ravaged by...well, there you have it: a monster. An alien. An alien monster. Big, but not quite a kaiju. Tough, but not invulnerable. (Or is it?) One monster against a whole, unprepared town. Or maybe two monsters. Or five. There might be eight.

And as for the "unprepared" thing? Well, this town is near the North Korean border, and everyone is able to materialize fully automatic weapons and RPGs at the drop of the hat.

"Where'd you get that from?" asks the beleaguered hero cop.
"That's not important right now," replies whoever he's asking.

It's a whopping 160 minutes long, and it was our first feature on our annual Halloween Haunt pre-park movie romp, right before Resident Evil, and the two are about as far apart as you could want, despite being sci-fi/horror/survival about a threat no one is prepared to handle.

This movie is an original concept written by its director Na Hong-jin, whose last movie was the classic The Wailing (which is about as long). It's a movie of discovery, both in terms of discovering the nature of the threat, and discovering the characters facing it.

It's just about made its budget back.

I get this somewhat tepid response. There is a lot going on here. It's sprawling in a way that is less satisfying in an action/survival context than it can be in a horror. Some of the action set pieces, which are overall quite good which a few dubious CGI moments, drag on a bit.

And the end of the movie is clearly a halfway point, at best. (I'm seeing it's meant to be the first in a trilogy.)

If it makes sense, I'd say Resident Evil is probably the better movie, but I'd be more likely to watch this one again. It interests me in a way that Cregger's movie does not. I hope the rest of the movies get made.