Hope holds 112 Malaysian cinemas in its second week, and the reviews have split down the middle

A week in, Hope has done what the chains hoped and what half its reviewers feared. Malay Mail's chart for 11 to 13 September has Na Hong-jin's film at No. 2 in Malaysia behind Chelot, and the paper's own summary of the reception is two words: mixed reviews. This site's listings for the week to 25 September still have it at 112 cinemas with 1,651 sessions, across GSC, TGV, FST, Mega, Paragon and Amerin, which is more cinemas than it had in its opening week, even though every IMAX hall it played has gone to Resident Evil.

The case for it

Malay Mail's columnist Aidil Rusli made the case on 19 September under the headline asking whether this is the Mad Max: Fury Road of monster movies. His account of the story is deliberately short: in Port Hope, an isolated seaside village near the Demilitarised Zone, police investigate attacks on livestock, and the investigation becomes a siege by something from elsewhere. That is the whole plot, he writes, and the point. What he admires is the craft around it: cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, who shot The Wailing and Parasite, editor Kim Sun-min, and set-pieces whose cutting keeps every chase legible. He calls the editing "a masterclass" and the film, for people who value pure genre craft, "an audacious, heart pounding triumph".

The case against it

The same column lists the faults the other camp has seized on. The computer-generated creatures look cheap next to the physical sets, he writes, a clash between top-tier practical filmmaking and undercooked effects; and the ending swerves into lore, with a crashed ship and suddenly subtitled aliens, in what reads as a set-up for a sequel. Malay Mail's news report before the opening had already noted that Na wrote a much longer script set over a single day and, in his words, chopped it in half, with the first half becoming this film. So the door left open at the end is by design.

The money, and the halls

Malay Mail's report of 9 September calls it South Korea's most expensive film, at a budget approaching 100 billion won, or about RM302 million; the columnist puts it at US$40 million, and Screen Daily's July reporting had 70 billion won. The figures differ by outlet; the claim of a record does not. In Korea it opened to 1.5 million admissions and US$11.3 million in its first weekend, Malay Mail reports, and here it had its gala at GSC Aurum TRX on 4 September before opening on 10 September in ScreenX, 4DX and IMAX.

This week the IMAX halls belong to Resident Evil, and Hope has moved to the other premium rooms: 131 sessions in Dolby Atmos, 51 in D-BOX motion seats, 40 in TGV's GETHA recliner suites, 36 in Indulge and 20 in 4DX at five GSC cinemas. Kuala Lumpur has 415 sessions, Selangor 349 and Johor 190. It is rated 18 and runs 157 minutes, so a 9pm start ends near midnight; Saturday has 421 sessions.

The Hope page lists every cinema and session with the format marked, the showtimes page puts each cinema's Hope times side by side, and this site's post before it opened has the Korean opening records and the Cannes reception in detail.