Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’m currently writing this on election day as the votes are being tallied, an occasion that could signal either the ebbing of the MAGA tide or the end of the United States as we know it. I have hope, though; American voters are for the most part simple, tribalistic creatures only vaguely aware of external stimuli, but the one-two punch of pointless tariffs and pointless wars has inflicted enough economic own-goals on our country that I think they may actually correlate causes and effects for once. That nightmare aside, I also finished up the altogether slight but generally charming Sparks of Tomorrow, and am thus once again on the hunt for outstanding 2026 anime to accompany my slow savoring of Scenes from Awajima. It’ll be time to actually get cracking on my year in review post soon, but in the meantime, let’s run down the week in films!
First up this week was Hope, the recent scifi epic by Na Hong-jin, who last directed 2016’s magnificent The Wailing. The film centers on the small, rural community of Hope Harbor, which comes under attack by a mysterious and incredibly powerful creature. With our perspective hopping between the local police force and a crew of intrepid hunters, the conflict spirals into a full-on war between hapless humans and a force beyond our understanding.
Hope is a goddamn no-breaks roller coaster of a film, taking the “things could always get worse” energy of The Wailing and fitting it into a relentless action-adventure shell. Having apparently earned something close to a blank check off the rightful success of The Wailing, Hong-jin directs his followup without compromise or restraint, happily veering from one of the greatest on-the-ground monster hunts I’ve seen into an extended monologue on poorly timed bowel movements, and then back to a chase scene for the record books.
The film’s wilder swings will undoubtedly lose some viewers – the CG beasts aren’t the most convincing, the pacing demands a deep love of pure action cinema, and the ending involves a genre shift as abrupt as the film’s many hairpin turns. But if you’re a lover of monster movies and classic Cameron-style action (Hong-jin splices Aliens, Terminator 2, and Avatar, among other influences), then Hope will undoubtedly prove a rare treat. There is virtually nothing operating at this film’s scale or ferocity, and with Hong-jin’s Wailing collaborator Hong Jyung-pyo once again serving as cinematographer, there’s also little that can match its gorgeous depictions of central Korea’s high hills and humble communities. Hope demonstrates a master of genre film operating at the highest level, elevating that pure joy of “wouldn’t it be cool if ____” into a series of setpieces destined for dazzled absorption and giddy retelling. An absolute delight.
Our next viewing was Beast From Haunted Cave, an early entry in Roger Corman’s vault of dubious treasures. Helmed by former theatre director Monte Hellman, the film follows a group of robbers who plan to detonate explosives in an abandoned mine, thereby distracting the law for long enough to let them rob a local bank. Unfortunately, their antics end up aggravating a massive spider monster living in the mine, who pursues them into the snow-covered Dakota hills with bloody results.
In spite of its title, there’s not really that much beast to speak of in this feature, which given its wire-and-tinsel form is likely for the best. Instead, Hellman puts his theatre instincts to work in crafting a tight, hard-boiled crime drama, focusing on character dynamics and creeping suspicion over supernatural theatrics. The film is indifferently shot and the creature is ridiculous, but Beast From Haunted Cave nonetheless captures that early-Hollywood feel of a story directly transposed from the stage, complete with the attentiveness to dialogue and intimacy of drama that defines theatre-native narratives. Far from a great film, and likely worse for its inclusion of a beast at all, but altogether a diverting watch for fans of Corman’s scrappy, lopsided oeuvre.
Next up on the classic OVA trawl was Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01, a crunchy robo-drama centered on a young mechanic named Koji Sugimoto, who accidentally finds himself piloting the titular MADOX-01 anti-tank robot. After rampaging through Tokyo for a while, he recalls he simply must get to a meeting with his girlfriend atop a nearby skyscraper. Unfortunately, the military at large and one tank-crazed warrior in particular are determined to stop him, leading to an explosive showdown in and above the city streets.
That’s pretty much the entirety of this one’s plot, but plot is clearly not what we’re here for. MADOX is all about that lovingly animated mechanical action, and goddamn is it dedicated to the cause. Directed by acclaimed mechanical designer Shinji Aramaki (Megazone 23, Bubblegum Crisis, Star Driver) and staffed by a rogue’s gallery of bubble-era talent, the film embodies the appeal of watching traditionally animated machinery swerve and soar, each shift of a tank’s barrel and extended activation sequence realized in loving, intimate detail. You can absolutely feel the crunch of steel and collapse of reinforced concrete as Koji’s craft goes about its violent business, making for a drama that disregards narrative to exist entirely on a tactile, action-and-consequence level. Every exemplar of the medium’s mechanical animation peak is a rare jewel; they truly do not make them like this anymore.
I then headed out to the theaters to catch Wildwood, the latest stop-motion production by the inimitable studio Laika. Based on a novel by Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, the film centers on Prue McKeel, a young teen growing up in Portland. When a murder of crows steals away her baby brother, Prue and her quasi-friend Curtis end up chasing them into a mysterious woodland kingdom, where talking animals and humans alike vie for control of their ivy-haunted world.
Wildwood is quite possibly the most impressive work of stop-motion animation that has or may ever exist. All of Laika’s films are a visual delight, but Wildwood takes their aesthetic to a wholly elevated, frankly unbelievable level of detail, breadth, and scale. The film contains worlds upon worlds, breathing life into Portland streets, woodland hollows, and dank dungeons, all of which are populated with dozens of distinctive and astonishingly animated characters. There are peaks of animated ambition and excellence that brought me to tears purely through their aesthetic distinction, conjuring a sense of gratitude that artists still might find shelters within which they can diligently apply themselves to such wonders as this.
The film’s narrative isn’t quite the equal of its animation, but that’s obviously a ludicrous bar, and Wildwood is on the whole still a driving, satisfyingly sinister fantasy tale. Meloy is clearly a fan of traditional fairy tales with nasty turns and unclear morals, and both the menace and ambiguity of such stories is winningly reconstructed here. There are points here and there where it feels like a character journey might have been abridged for adaptation’s sake, but even those moments feel of a piece with the film’s emphasis on the fleeting nature of all things. And no quibbles about plotting can take away a thing from Wildwood’s all-consuming aesthetic impact – it’s a film that left me outright electrified, glowing with the joy of art, and hungry to get back to work on my own half-formed creations. Go see Wildwood, as soon as you can. You will not regret it.
