‘Hope’ Director Na Hong

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Hope’ Director Na Hong-jin Talks Epic Highway Scene

The director of the frightening feature film talks working with running horses while keeping the humor in line

One of 2026’s most talked-about films finally hit American theaters this week after making its debut at Cannes in May and opening in South Korea back in July. We’re talking about Hope, which was written and directed by Na Hong-jin (The Chaser, The Wailing) and focuses on a police chief and his rookie deputy and their efforts to defend their small village town of Hope Harbor from a group of mysterious creatures who have taken residence and are destroying cattle before tearing through the entire town.

You may remember the trailer; once it hit the timeline, everyone tapped into quality cinema was buzzing about the rip-roaring sci-fi epic.

As you can see, Hopeblends several genres into one chaotic treat for the senses, mixing humor with drama that can turn on a dime when a horrific beast is running directly towards you!

One of the film’s more impressive sequences occurs toward the end, where the police chief and the deputy speed down a stretch of road, hoping to rescue another man atop a galloping horse alongside, all the while one of the aforementioned beasts is in hot pursuit. The kicker? The rookie’s hanging out of the window, emptying her clip at the ferocious beast.

Just check out this amazing still from the film!

With sequences this dope, we had to get more information from Na himself, who spoke on the difficulty of working with horses in scenes like this. “Of course, it takes horses a lot of energy to be able to run that fast,” he began. “I’d say we were dealing with about 10 horses on set at any time.” He says that as they got closer to shooting the scene, they knew which horses were better actors than the others. “We really got to know the horses quite well.”

As you can imagine, even being well-acquainted with the best horse actors is one thing; adding a long strip of highway and a car at high-speed, and you’re increasing the difficulty level, which Na says came into play during the moments when “the vehicles had to go at the same speed as the horses on the freeway. The vehicle has to adjust to the speed of the horse while being in incredible proximity to each other,” with everything from the close distance of the horse and the car to the firearms being used adding to the situation.

“These elements all coming together was a difficult part of the choreography,” Na admits, breaking down their process. “We had kind of a model of a horse in a garage, and with the stunt team and my DP, we really thought about what lens we should select, how we should suit these sequences, and the storyboarding of that sequence itself was something that took a lot of effort.” He also says that a lot of thought was put into this scene when writing the film.

“I would say that the architecture of the sequence was built into the script writing process. Those elements were all set, and we just had to decide how and in what way we would be able to shoot the sequence.”

It sounds like all of their prior proper planning paid off when it came to filming, as Na says that “contrary to what we were all worried about,” they were finished “really quickly. All the sequences, switching horses, all that, I thought it would take many, many days, but it was just a day of shooting, and yeah, it was really surprising.”

Figuring out all of that works on multiple levels; measuring twice means you only have to cut once, saving time on the production side of things, but again, with a film this thrilling, with many laugh-out-loud moments, being organized with the action sequencing allows Na to figure out when and where to add moments of comedy amidst the chaos.

“I would say it’s just a matter of sensibility,” he explains. “When it felt like there was too much action going on, we would throw in a joke, and there are 10 or so elements all working together at one time. When one element really feels like it’s about to be spent or burned out, we bring another element to the forefront, and that’s sort of how we designed the balance of the film.”

Na Hong-jin’s Hope is in theaters now.