{"id":774119,"date":"2026-09-17T23:56:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774119\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T23:56:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:56:15","slug":"hungry-review-not-here-for-a-long-time-or-a-good-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774119\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungry review \u2014 ‘Not here for a long time or a good time’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bunch of tourists looking for alligators on a Louisiana bayou come under attack from a hungry, hungry hippo.<\/p>\n

Hippotamuses\u00a0in pop culture have mostly been treated\u00a0warmly. From the dancing kind in Disney\u2019s\u00a0Fantasia<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Jada Pinkett Smith\u2019s\u00a0Gloria in\u00a0Madagascar<\/a>\u00a0to George in ITV kids\u2019\u00a0staple\u00a0Rainbow, the semi-aquatic\u00a0mammals have often\u00a0been\u00a0presented as gentle,\u00a0benign\u00a0and surprisingly nimble. Writer-director James Nunn\u2019s\u00a0Hungry\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the title itself\u00a0riffs\u00a0on the\u00a0fun, frantic table-top game\u00a0Hungry\u00a0Hungry\u00a0Hippos\u202f\u2014\u00a0tries to redress the balance by turning\u00a0Hippopotamus amphibius\u00a0into an unstoppable killing machine, a mud-bound Anton Chigurh without the\u00a0bad\u00a0hair. Unfortunately,\u00a0this homicidal hippo is\u00a0pretty much the\u00a0only thing\u00a0Hungry\u00a0has going for it.<\/p>\n

\"Hungry\"<\/p>\n

The hackneyed premise throws together a band\u00a0of thinly drawn\u00a0holidaymakers\u00a0who take a boat trip\u00a0around the bayou\u00a0to see some\u00a0\u2019gators\u00a0run by hunky captain Rodrigo (Michel Curiel). So,\u00a0we have retired fireman-with-a-dead-wife Tim (Jim Meskimen), his uptight middle-aged daughter Sally (Samantha Coughlan) and\u00a0Sally\u2019s\u00a0stroppy\/horny\u00a0teenage son Mike\u00a0(River\u00a0Codack)\u00a0plus business-type Dionne (Tracey Bonner), who is estranged from her\u00a0step-kids and insists on wearing stilettos in swamp country.<\/p>\n

The hippo is mostly represented by water-level\u00a0POV\u00a0shots\u00a0but when\u00a0he\u00a0turns\u00a0up on screen, he is an\u00a0effective, enjoyably\u00a0practical predator.<\/p>\n

Livening up\u00a0the\u00a0proceedings\u00a0are party girl Hannah (Olivia Bernstone) and most importantly of all, her bestie Sistine (Madison Davenport), a self-described failure\u00a0who\u00a0has just been fired from her minimum wage job and is struggling to care for her sick mother. From the get-go,\u00a0it is clear that Sistine\u00a0has\u00a0big Final Girl energy, partly because she is nice, partly because she is resourceful and partly because she is named after a chapel.<\/p>\n

Because\u00a0historically hippos\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0pose much of a threat, Nunn\u2019s script\u00a0works hard\u00a0to\u00a0establish\u00a0their menacing bona fides. Enter Walker\u00a0(Joaquim de Almeida), a kind of Quint of hippos who tells everyone the animal\u00a0may be vegetarian\u00a0but\u00a0weighs 3.5 tons,\u00a0is responsible for\u00a0500 human deaths a year\u00a0and \u201ckills for fun\u201d.<\/p>\n

After the hippo upturns the tour boat, the film is mostly set in a tree\u00a0as the characters\u00a0struggle to\u00a0stay out of the water and\u00a0come up with\u00a0bone-headed plans for escape. The hippo is mostly represented by water-level\u00a0POV\u00a0shots\u00a0but when\u00a0he\u00a0turns\u00a0up on screen, he is an\u00a0effective, enjoyably\u00a0practical predator.\u00a0He frankly\u00a0gives a\u00a0more nuanced\u00a0performance\u00a0than\u00a0anyone\u00a0else.<\/p>\n

There is\u00a0probably\u00a0a\u00a0fun movie in killer hippos\u00a0\u2014\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0just a shame\u00a0Hungry\u00a0has little sense of its own ridiculousness. None of the\u00a0kills\u00a0delight. It comes to something when the scariest thing about the film is\u00a0the\u00a0NOW\u00a0TV thumbnail.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bunch of tourists looking for alligators on a Louisiana bayou come under attack from a hungry, hungry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-774119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}