Hungry

by Mike McGranaghan

If you’re a fan of animal attack movies, Hungry sounds like a can’t-miss proposition. It’s sort of a cinematic version of the board game Hungry Hungry Hippos, except instead of little white marbles, people are what gets eaten. How can that concept possibly suck, right? Well, writer/director James Nunn (not to be confused with Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn) has found a way.

BFFs Sistine (Madison Davenport) and Hannah (Olivia Bernstone) are partying it up in New Orleans. A local tour guide, Rodrigo (Michel Curiel), invites them to take part in an alligator sight-seeing cruise. Joining them are Sally (Samantha Coughlan), her aging father Tim (Jim Meskimen), and her teenage son Mikey (River Codack). Every animal attack movie of this variety needs to have a D.A. – a Designated Asshole. In this case, it’s well-to-do Dionne (Tracey Bonner), who slips Rodrigo a couple hundred bucks to go off course so she can take a picture of an infamously large gator out there in the swamp. The boat is destroyed, everyone is left stranded, and then the hippo shows up.

Eventually, that is. For a movie that promises insane hippopotamus attacks, Hungry sure takes its time getting to them. We don’t even get a decent look at the hippo until almost an hour in. (The film is only 91 minutes long.) Compare that with January’s monkey-attack picture Primate, in which a chimpanzee rips a guy's face off in the first five minutes. Much of the running time here is spent watching the characters climb trees for safety or trying to pull supplies out of the water. Not exactly a thrill a minute.

Even worse is the quality of the hippo attacks…or, should I say, the lack of quality. People coming to a movie like this want crazy gore and mayhem. That is literally the whole point of animal-attack movies. Scares come from imagining the horrible fate that could arise from encountering an animal run amok. Nunn keeps the violence at a PG-13 level, often cutting away just as the hippo action starts to get interesting. What is the point of making a film about a deadly hippo if you’re not going to deliver the goods?

We’re left with actors spouting inane dialogue and splashing around in an artificial swamp. The sole positive is veteran actor Joaquim de Almeida, who plays Walker, the requisite Quint-like grizzled old hippo hunter who sets out to save the gang. He obviously realizes everything around him is junk, so he has fun with the role.

Thus far, 2026 has given us Primate and the shark thriller Deep Water. Those movies understood the assignment. Hungry does not.