Hungry review
A hungry, hungry hippo does what hungry, hungry hippos do.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Hungry
Directed by James Nunn
Written by James Nunn
Starring Madison Davenport, Tracey Bonner, Joaquim de Almeida, Michael Curiel, Samantha Coughlan, Olivia Bernstone and Jim Meskimen
Hungry Review
You knew we were going to talk about this one, right? If you make a movie about a killer hippo and title it Hungry…we’re going to talk about it. Killer animal movies can go down many paths…and it’s always interesting to see which one a movie chooses. Especially when they are dealing with budget constraints. Most of them riff on Jaws. Why wouldn’t they? It’s a masterpiece and a perfect roadmap all in one. Hungry does take some cues from Spielberg’s classic…hiding the creature…POV shots from under the water. Mostly though…it plays out like more of a stock survival thriller.
The story takes place in the swamps of New Orleans. It wisely gets its cast of characters on the water pretty quickly. The set-up involves an alligator tour boat that takes a detour into dangerous territory and runs afoul of a dangerous killer hippo. You probably knew that already. It’s why we’re all here. Only one character gets any real focus before the boat is capsized by something huge underneath the surface. Sistine (Madison Davenport) is on a long planned vacation with her best friend. Unfortunately, a horrible boss fires her for it. She’s already struggling with the death of her mother and paying off stacks of medical bills. Yeah…it’s layered on pretty thick. Thick enough that I briefly wondered if Hungry would buck tradition and kill her of first. You sure wouldn’t have seen it coming.
Instead, Sistine serves as our main character in Hungry. She’s surrounded by a host of other tourists with varying degrees of character traits. One of them paid the boat captain extra to take them off course so she could see the biggest alligator in the land. When the hippo overturns their boat…they’re way off course with little hope of being found by anyone. Movies like this should cut to the chase…and Hungry is right to do so.
You shouldn’t get too attached to any of these characters. Hippos aren’t something to mess with. Or, for a large portion of Hungry, something to see. We go a long time without seeing the angry killer hippo here…which is likely another budget choice. When we do see it…it looks pretty good, honestly. When we don’t…Hungry goes into the Jaws bag of tricks to do everything in its power to build suspense. It mostly works. But the story runs out of gas before too long. Things pick up in the third act…but there is a saggy middle here where people sit in the dark and not much is going on. I don’t have any suggestions for what they should have done instead…but the middle part of Hungry isn’t very exciting.
The movie looks great though. They get some great shots of the lush greens, blue skies and blue waters. It’s kind of a gorgeous movie, honestly. It gives Hungry the look of high production values even though it must have come on a small scale budget. The cast is largely good as well. They know what kind of movie they’re in…and they play it for thrills whenever they can. Sadly, Hungry doesn’t have enough thrills to sustain its 90 minute runtime. The opening and closing acts work pretty well…but that middle section drags it down. We finally get some hippo action on screen in the climax, and it works well enough that saving it pays off well.
What doesn’t work as well is the lack of interesting things going on in Hungry’s story. You can’t make the entire thing out of hippo attacks, obviously. But it needed some kind of a B plot to keep things moving narratively. There is a bit of one, to be fair. There is a lone person trying to find out what happened to the missing boat. This never feels different enough of exciting enough to supplement the main story, however. It’s just another slow part during the parts of Hungry that are already slow. Even with Sistine’s mound of troubles nothing in her character arc feels like it’s important to what’s going on around her. That would be fine too if it had been done with purpose. I love movies that drop plots cold when danger attacks. Hungry doesn’t really do that. Instead, it chooses to wallow in the swamp for longer than it should.
Scare Value
Hungry isn’t the thrill ride I hoped it would be based on its premise. It does some fun things early and finds them again late…but the saggy middle makes for a tough wait. Some comedy might have livened things up a bit…but they went for realism and hidden dangers over people running from a rampaging hippo. Again, budget reasons constrain how much of that you can do. To pull off what Hungry tries instead…a deeper script was needed. There’s nothing actively wrong with it…but there isn’t enough positive to outweigh its plethora of mundane moments.
2.5/5
Hungry Link
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