A bunch of tourists looking for alligators on a Louisiana bayou come under attack from a hungry, hungry hippo.
Hippotamuses in pop culture have mostly been treated warmly. From the dancing kind in Disney’s Fantasia to Jada Pinkett Smith’s Gloria in Madagascar to George in ITV kids’ staple Rainbow, the semi-aquatic mammals have often been presented as gentle, benign and surprisingly nimble. Writer-director James Nunn’s Hungry — the title itself riffs on the fun, frantic table-top game Hungry Hungry Hippos — tries to redress the balance by turning Hippopotamus amphibius into an unstoppable killing machine, a mud-bound Anton Chigurh without the bad hair. Unfortunately, this homicidal hippo is pretty much the only thing Hungry has going for it.
The hackneyed premise throws together a band of thinly drawn holidaymakers who take a boat trip around the bayou to see some ’gators run by hunky captain Rodrigo (Michel Curiel). So, we have retired fireman-with-a-dead-wife Tim (Jim Meskimen), his uptight middle-aged daughter Sally (Samantha Coughlan) and Sally’s stroppy/horny teenage son Mike (River Codack) plus business-type Dionne (Tracey Bonner), who is estranged from her step-kids and insists on wearing stilettos in swamp country.
The hippo is mostly represented by water-level POV shots but when he turns up on screen, he is an effective, enjoyably practical predator.
Livening up the proceedings are party girl Hannah (Olivia Bernstone) and most importantly of all, her bestie Sistine (Madison Davenport), a self-described failure who has just been fired from her minimum wage job and is struggling to care for her sick mother. From the get-go, it is clear that Sistine has big Final Girl energy, partly because she is nice, partly because she is resourceful and partly because she is named after a chapel.
Because historically hippos don’t pose much of a threat, Nunn’s script works hard to establish their menacing bona fides. Enter Walker (Joaquim de Almeida), a kind of Quint of hippos who tells everyone the animal may be vegetarian but weighs 3.5 tons, is responsible for 500 human deaths a year and “kills for fun”.
After the hippo upturns the tour boat, the film is mostly set in a tree as the characters struggle to stay out of the water and come up with bone-headed plans for escape. The hippo is mostly represented by water-level POV shots but when he turns up on screen, he is an effective, enjoyably practical predator. He frankly gives a more nuanced performance than anyone else.
There is probably a fun movie in killer hippos — it’s just a shame Hungry has little sense of its own ridiculousness. None of the kills delight. It comes to something when the scariest thing about the film is the NOW TV thumbnail.
Starring a fun prosthetic creature, Hungry is not here for a long time or a good time. Hippos, you had your chance and you blew it. Bring on the violent vole movies.
