New HOPE Poster Teases the Scale of Na Hong-jin’s Creature
The latest poster for Na Hong-jin’s HOPE brings the mysterious threat waiting in Hope Harbor into view.
The new poster for Na Hong-jin’s HOPE gives us another carefully limited glimpse of the threat waiting in Hope Harbor.
Released by NEON, the HOPE poster places Hoyeon’s armed police officer in the foreground while part of a massive creature’s open mouth appears above her. We still cannot see enough to understand exactly what the creature looks like, but the difference in scale makes the situation feel considerably worse.
The poster preserves the mystery that has defined the marketing so far while adding the ominous question, “Is This How It Ends?”
HOPE opens exclusively in theaters September 9.
New HOPE poster courtesy of NEON via PR Collaborative.The Poster Preserves the Mystery
The first teaser for HOPE relied on frightened reactions, brief flashes of something unnatural, and the sudden disruption of an isolated South Korean village. The poster follows the same approach.
Rather than revealing the full creature, it limits our view to part of its enormous mouth looming over Hoyeon’s character. The image communicates the scale of the danger without explaining what the people of Hope Harbor are facing.
That restraint remains the most effective part of the campaign. We know something huge and dangerous has arrived, but the marketing has not yet given us enough information to understand it.
Na Hong-jin Returns After The Wailing
HOPE is Na Hong-jin’s first feature film since The Wailing arrived in 2016.
That movie followed a rural police officer struggling to understand a series of increasingly disturbing events threatening his village. Na combined horror, mystery, dark humor, and uncertainty while repeatedly forcing viewers to question whether the characters had correctly interpreted what was happening around them.
HOPE appears to take some of that same fear of the unknown and expand it into a considerably larger collision of science fiction, creature horror, action, mystery, and dark humor. The official production notes describe a story driven by conflicting perspectives and the destructive consequences of misunderstanding, but the public marketing has thankfully avoided explaining exactly how those ideas affect the film’s central mystery.
Building the World of Hope Harbor
The production filmed across South Korea and Romania, using real villages, forests, and outdoor environments to give the increasingly strange story a tangible setting.
Na reunited with The Wailing cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, who used natural light and wide-angle photography to capture the film’s rural atmosphere and high-energy movement. Some of the forest material was filmed in Romania’s remote Retezat National Park, while locations throughout South Korea were combined to create Hope Harbor.
Michael Abels, whose previous horror scores include Get Out, Us, and Nope, composed the music with a 70-piece orchestra.
What We Think
The first teaser made HOPE look like someone took the dread and uncertainty of The Wailing, dropped it into a creature feature, and then stepped on the gas.
The new poster does not finally reveal the creature, and that is probably for the best. A partial glimpse of its mouth is enough to suggest how badly outmatched Hoyeon’s character may be without sacrificing the mystery surrounding what has arrived in Hope Harbor.
Na Hong-jin has not directed a feature in ten years, and the marketing continues to make his return look stranger, larger, and more ambitious. We will be revisiting The Wailing before HOPE arrives in September, but waiting until then is becoming considerably more difficult.
Watch the HOPE Trailer
Source: NEON and the official HOPE production notes.
