HUNGRY Review

The humble creature feature: a movie where some kind of mindless beast, be it natural or mythical, hunts down a bevy of human prey as it marches a path of mayhem through a setting that might otherwise be safe. It's a tale as old as time. Obviously the most legendary such film is Jaws, the 1970's Horror/Drama stand-out that somehow found the sweet spot of combining brilliant, relatable, dynamic characters with true frights and solid action. But it's far from the only such flick. In Bruce the shark's wake, creature features have become a regular cinematic trope that just won't die.

In just this current year, I have seen a few other new-release shark tales in the form of The Devil's Mouth and Thrash and Chum. They were... not ideal (well, The Devil's Mouth was not horrible. Thrash and Chum, on the other hand…). Additionally, 2026 gave us Primate, in which a rabid chimp went nuts on its owners. It's been a big year for nature's monsters hunting us down like wounded animals!

This brings us to today's entry, Hungry. Available on Amazon Prime, Hungry is obviously another creature feature film. It starts off with two young women on a vacation in the Bayou. When one (Sistine) is fired over the phone, the other (Hannah) decides she needs to let loose and enjoy her time off instead of fretting.

This leads to the two of them booking an alligator tour the next morning before drinking the night away. Fortunately (or unfortunately for these two), they manage to wake up in time and catch the van to the tour.

At the docks before the boat ride, we meet the rest of our cast of characters. There is the guide, a businesswoman who weirdly seems like she should be above the whole ordeal but is very into it, and a family of grandfather, mother, and son. They all get on board the tiny vessel and set off on a quest to see the local legend, Big Ben the gator.

After a while, they find Ben... except he has been eviscerated by something even bigger and more powerful than him. What could be out in the Bayou that is tough enough to take down Big Ben... and what will happen if it decides to go after the folks in its territory?

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Madison Davenport is more than serviceable as our lead character, a down-on-her-luck young woman on vacation with her friend. Sistine has a tragic enough backstory to make her worthy of being rooted for--even if said backstory is not all that well developed--and Davenport plays her very sympathetically. She is as much as you can hope for from a protagonist in this kind of outing.

+ The concept is both a take on a classic and also original at the same time. Man Vs Animal as a storytelling conceit has been around for AGES, and they are all just chasing Jaws' ghost... and that's fair. But I've never seen the idea played out using a HIPPOPOTAMUS, though! Given their legend as big time man-killers, that's wild, but I guess a lot of movies aren't set in Africa, and that's where they tend to dwell. So this movie just puts hippos in the US! It's a ridiculous backstory, but it works for what Hungry is trying to do.

Hippos are curious beasts, even aside from their reputation. They are somewhat adorable looking things, but they can be threatening as hell when they open their jaws. And Hungry plays a bit with that duality. That's a kind of aspect other man-eater films don't tend to have.

- Hippos or not, this is, as I stated, a pretty played out kind of movie. I have already seen a few shark/alligator attack movies this year, and there was very little here to differentiate it from any of the other animal danger flicks. Aside from the creative antagonist, that is, I suppose. The characters are varied but unmemorable; some are assholes, others are heroic. They mostly all exist to be victims. The carnage starts early and never really lets up. It's all the usual tropes in this one that you have come to expect.

- For my recent talk of carnage in Hungry, some of the deaths are off-screen here, and I felt cheated. It is as if Hungry ran out of creative ways to off folks. The mother character just... walks into the fog and leaves the movie, and we are left to assume she died. Another gets pulled under and we never see the bloodshed. And still another just randomly succumbs to injuries with no fanfare. The deaths, which are one of the reasons to watch a picture like this, were super disappointing.

OVERALL

Hungry is a movie that is fun in principle. We have seen sharks and crocs and lions and chimpanzees and bears go on animalistic rampages, but never one of the biggest killers on the planet. Well now the hippopotamus has had its day! It's just not a very good day, unfortunately. If Hungry had some creative kills or dire action or fun characters, that would be one thing, but it has none of those aspects. It's just another bland creature feature.

🍿 SCORE = 28 /100