Review:
"Hungry"
VOD Release Date: June 23, 2026 Rating: R Running Time: 93 minutes Why borrow the title of your killer hippo Jaws rip-off after a kids board game if the wrathful mammal in question isn’t interested in devouring its prey? “That’s the most dangerous animal they’ve got” in Africa, forewarns Joaquim de Almeida’s grouchy Louisiana tour boat operator Walker in Hungry. “Supremely aggressive. Responsible for over 500 human deaths a year. Vegetarian. Which means he ain’t killing you to eat you—he’s killing you for fun.” So what the unsuspecting tourists in writer/director James Nunn’s surprisingly humorless horror yarn must contend with in the Louisiana bayou is less than a “Hungry Hungry Hippo” than a territorial terror unforgiving of trespassers. The tourists—led by a plucky Madison Davenport of From Dusk till Dawn: The Series—end up stranded deep in the bayou when one of them pays off the tour boat captain to search for a monster-sized gator nicknamed “Big Ben.” Instead, they find a pissed-off hippo. Two minutes later, everyone’s either huddled on the top of the capsized tour boat or hanging for dear life from a swamp tree. From this point forward, Hungry unfolds as your standard-issue “man vs. beast” survival thriller, with the hippo systematically picking off the passengers in a fit of rage. It comes as no surprise that Nunn, who impressed with his Scott Adkins One Shot action franchise, offers a tense and technically proficient exercise in terror, even if the hippo is more a presence in the first half of the film. Once out of the water and on land, the hippos proves to be a fearsome brute that is an strikingly realistic combination of prosthetics, practical, and VFX effects. If the first half of Hungry is a slight slog through the bog, it’s because Nunn actually shows an interest in his survivors and the intriguing group dynamic created by their predicament. Nunn’s investment in his characters pays off as each death feels like an actual loss as opposed to him gratuitously upping the body count. Even the businesswoman responsible for serving her fellow tour boat passengers as hippo happy meals is more misguided than villainous, and give her credit for trying to be part of the solution and not the problem. Of course, (the Malta-shot!) Hungry does raise a question bigger than its 10,000-pound killing machine: what the hell is a hippo roaming around the Louisiana bayou? Without getting into spoilers, because the explanation is both compelling and deserving of further investigation, Nunn deserves credit for stumbling upon obscure local knowledge and parlaying into it a bloodbath in the bayou. Aired: June 24, 2026. Web site: https://auraentertainment.com/aura/titles/hungry |
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