Na Hong-jin is back with Hope, a secretive creature feature set in Hope Harbor, South Korea, and Neon has already given the film a fall theatrical release. The director’s fourth film arrives a decade after 2016’s The Wailing, with Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Hoyeon leading a cast that was kept under wraps until shortly before Cannes.

The film did not sneak in quietly once it surfaced. Mubi acquired Hope for multiple territories ahead of its Cannes premiere, and the movie arrived carrying the weight of the largest budget in Korean film history. That scale is part of the draw, but so is the promise of a filmmaker returning to the genre space that made his name. Hoyeon also makes her big-screen debut here, giving the project an added layer of curiosity for audiences who know her from elsewhere.

The story is set in a small town near the North Korean border in the late ’80s, before cellphones, and the review places the film in a time when fear spreads faster than certainty. Hoyeon’s character speaks for that panic plainly when she says, “It’s killed so many people,” and then, “Monster or not, it’s just not right!” Those lines fit a movie that the review says is openly a Korean creature feature, even if the film keeps much of its plotting hidden for a long stretch.

That secrecy has been part of the build for months. Fans had been waiting for Na’s next genre film since 2016, and the long gap only sharpened the reaction when the project finally emerged with its international cast and major-financing scale. The film’s path also shows how far the campaign had traveled before a wide audience could see it: first the hush, then the acquisition, then the festival unveiling, then the fall rollout.

The review is clear that the results are uneven. It calls the first hour outstandingly berserk and praises some of the most breathtakingly elegant action moviemaking of any year, but it also says the creature effects are subpar and the mythology arrives through silly stabs that do not always land. Even so, the movie’s size, its cast and Na’s return to the genre keep it in the conversation.

By the time the film reaches theaters this fall, the answer to the main question is already there: Hope is not a quiet comeback, but a massive one, built to turn a decade of anticipation into an event.