I feel like anyone who knows me knew I was going to watch Hungry. It’s a movie about killer hippo attacks. Even without the tongue-in-cheek title, chances are good I’d be interested. Especially since this killer animal story doesn’t take place in the normal place you’d find hippos. Nope, this is set in New Orleans.  So how did hippos get to Louisiana and is there enough carnage to justify whatever backstory they come up with? Let’s find out. 

• Directed by: James Nunn
• Written by: James Nunn
• Starring: Madison Davenport. Tracey Bonner. Joaquim de Almeida

The Set Up

The cast is decent enough. We have two girls blowing off steam after personal and professional tragedy, a businesswoman who is wildly out of place on the swamp boat, and three generations of a nice family: a grandfather, mother, and older teen son.  The gator tour isn’t a luxury experience, but there isn’t anything too shady about it. 

The owner, prolific character actor Jaoquim de Alemeida, gives the standard warning that gators are more dangerous than they think. The tour goes well however, until they try to track down “Big Ben”, a legendary twelve-foot gator. However, Big Ben isn’t where his tracker shows him to be, and when the tour finds him, Ben has been bitten in half by something much larger than he is. 

Of course, the hippo attacks when the group tries to leave the area, finally starting the dangerous part of their adventure.  The good news is that most of the tourists seem to be fairly competent. The mom, Sally, is a nurse and she immediately uses her skills to help boat captain Rodrigo not bleed to death in the aftermath of the attack. 

The Issues

Strangely, hippos being in the Louisiana swamp is not the most unbelievable plot point. See, back in the early 1900s, some politicians tried to pass a bill that would introduce hippo meat as an alternative food source. Please note that this is not just the backstory of the movi; this is a real thing that happened. Hungry’s rampaging hippo is a result of the failed attempt at farming hippo meat. 

The unbelievable part is some of the unnecessary details they add to increase the danger. Rodrigo’s infection, something that should take days kills him in like hours. It’s not a funny movie, but it’s a not a realistic one either.

What Makes a Good Angry Animal Movie?

A good killer animal movie needs a believable creature combined with palpable loss. Weirdly, Hungry achieves this. I say weirdly because this is a movie referencing a kid’s board game with its title.  The deaths hit harder than they should, considering. 

It helps that the characters are slightly more developed than your standard creature-attack archetypes. Yes, the writing is cliché. The grandfather, Tim, gives his life story and hands over his knife in a conversation that pretty much sets his death flag.  

It’s also not afraid to kill off characters. I wish it didn’t telegraph so badly who was going to die when, however. That may also be a function of how many of these things I’ve seen. 

The Marketing Problem

Hungry is not as fun as the name implies. There’s little humor and a lot of grim moments. This doesn’t make it a bad movie. Quite the contrary, in fact. Humor in horror can be a hard balance to pull off. Finding the funny in the dark moments, like someone being eaten by a giant hippo in the bayou, requires balance.  

But I don’t think the filmmakers wanted to make a horror comedy. The title could have been a marketing decision rather than a creative one. It does apply, vaguely, but it’s a stretch. That’s not the real issue though.

A comedy would have chosen different characters to kill, less likeable ones. Or, created situations where the audience may have rooted for the hippo rather than the incredibly sympathetic cast. 

There is a bit of theme here about invasive species and the dangers of messing with nature. Most creature features come down to something, or someone, being where they don’t belong. In more recent stories, we address man’s culpability in these tragedies, like how greed and the lack of understanding of nature leads to so much death. Hungry is no exception. 

We don’t have to be at war with nature if we understand how to better exist with it. Not a terrible theme for a movie about a killer hippo.

Final Thoughts:

If you’re looking for a quirky, fun animal-attack movie, Hungry might not be the right choice for you. It’s heavier than it has any right to be. The hippo looks decent, and it’s interesting enough to keep most viewers engaged. The kills are fairly quick and there’s little gore. Plus, it’s a killer hippo.

Hungry is available on streaming.