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In the recent plane crash survivors vs sharks movie Deep Water, lantern-jawed hero Aaron Eckhart tries to comfort a young girl before her first flight. “You know what’s more dangerous than flying on an airplane?”, he reassures her. “Hippos. Google it!” Illuminating as this nugget of information might be, there isn’t much chance of encountering one of the beasties either at 30,000 feet or bobbing among the wreckage of a 747, but they do end up in the most surprising places, as the characters in James Nunn’s new thriller Hungry will soon discover…
Hungover and reeling from the loss of her job, the magnificently named Sistine, (Madison Davenport) and her best pal Hannah, (Olivia Bernstone) take a boat trip deep into the bayou. Shifty businesswoman Dionne, (Tracey Bonner), has bribed the tour guide to take a detour far off the usual route,, dooming them and their fellow passengers to a life-or-death struggle against a rampaging hippopotamus, which starts to pick them off one by one.
Huge, fast and savage, the creature has already offed a giant alligator and relentlessly targets the holidaymakers. As night falls, grizzled tour operator and Quint analogue Walker, (Joaquim de Almeida, wasted here), putters out to the rescue, toting a tranquilliser rifle and playing Twisted Sister at eleven on the Richter scale.
Will he get there in time?… Who will survive? And what the heck is a hippo doing smack in the middle of the Louisiana swamps rather than its traditional African stomping grounds?
The answers to those questions – especially the last one- will surprise you. (I feel duty bound to point out that a hippo’s traditional diet is generally plant based, so although it might drag its victims underwater, overturn their vessel or gore them with its ferocious tusks, it is all to protect its territory rather than consuming that sweet human meat, thus rendering the title Hungry a bit of a misnomer – a bit like that Seventies board game, “Hungry Hungry Hippos”, which was equally implausible if a little more exciting.)
As per one of my favourite phrases, the tension is bearable. Most of the action consists of people dangling from trees above the overturned boat before falling into the water/ jumping in/ losing the general will to live- for someone with a hangover the size of a garden shed, Sistine is capable of some impressive feats of gymnastic skill and hopefully the actress will pop up in some mid-tier MCU project or similar.
Unsurprisingly there is a fair amount of Jaws-style underwater POV to try and amp up tension, (who would have guessed?), but after what seems like an eternity, the quick-fire glimpses of the monster we finally get when it does attack are reasonably effective. However towards the end of the movie, when the waddling beastie is on land, I couldn’t quite dispel my memories of the cute Wonderful World of Disney creatures seen on TV. Admittedly those shows didn’t feature unwary folks in safari jackets being ripped apart, but then neither does Hungry – yes, people die, but for a supposed horror story, there is surprisingly little gore on display.
For a small-ish cast, one would have hoped for a bit more room to develop the characters but sadly the dialogue is a tad flat and peppered with chunks of exposition- I’m guessing that Sistine’s childhood trauma at the hands of somebody in a Hyacinth Hippo costume on a fateful visit to Disneyland will just have to wait for that never-to-be-procuced sequel. Every single one of them makes truly terrible decisions to facilitate the plot and/ or ending up at a location suitably isolated to put them all in peril.
Hannah jokily asks, “Whatever next – flying piranhas?”, (early James Cameron reference, horror hounds!), and I personally would have loved to see them leaning into the sheer absurdity of the situation before kicking the proverbial bucket.
Sadly Hungry passes the time adequately enough but should be classed as a snack between meals that definitely won’t spoil your appetite.
Extras include Making-Of featurette.
