A Louisiana swamplands tour group are forced to fight for their lives against a rampaging hippo in James Nunn’s Hungry.

Creature features are common. Their appeal lies in the fear of being hunted by something stronger and more instinctive. At their core, these stories frame humanity in direct opposition to nature, testing whether intellect and ingenuity can overcome raw ferocity. When that conflict is paired with inventive kills and clear jeopardy, the genre can be at its most effective.

Hungry adds hippopotamuses to the cinematic canon of dangerous animals. Hippos are rarely used as on‑screen threats, yet their size alone makes them hazardous even when any harm they cause is incidental. Here, the danger is entirely deliberate. This hippo has every intention of attacking the people unfortunate enough to cross its path.

The main issue Hungry cannot overcome is its failure to use its core concept to its full potential. It takes a long time for the group to encounter the hippo, and when they finally do, the film delays showing it and never gives the audience a clear sense of the danger they’re in. Budget limitations clearly play a part, but there are ways to work around that which the film doesn’t attempt. Jaws is the classic example of how to be selective in showing the creature while still building suspense and populating the story with characters who are compelling enough to hold attention. Withholding the animal isn’t interesting on its own. What happens in its absence has to be gripping enough that the audience isn’t focused on what they aren’t seeing.

Hungry has the potential to do this. The tour group is a diverse collection of characters with clear traits that could support a stronger story. Sistine (Madison Davenport) and Hannah (Olivia Bernstone) are in New Orleans to celebrate and escape the complications of their lives at home. Tim (Jim Meskimen), a retired firefighter, is calm and collected in a crisis, while his daughter Sally (Samantha Coughlan) wants to enjoy time with her family and her son Mikey (River Codack) is captivated by the beautiful women on the tour. Rodrigo (Michel Curiel), the guide, brings experience and authority, and Dionne (Tracey Bonner) is the self‑serving career‑driven woman who believes her devotion to her family entitles her to special treatment. Added to this is Walker (Joaquim de Almeida), a man who prides himself on having bested nature many times before. It’s an intriguing ensemble, and the film is at its strongest when it lets them bounce off one another, but it never fully exploits the potential built into each of them.

Sistine is the lead. Her monologue effectively outlines how overwhelmed she feels by recent events. What is meant to be an escapist vacation is interrupted by a call informing her she has been fired, and that moment lands on top of an already heavy load made up of a sick mother whose care has left her drowning in debt and the responsibilities she has taken on. It’s a lot to place on one character, yet the film establishes someone who needs a win and feels she has lost her sense of purpose because her life has been defined by doing things for others. There is no resentment in that, but the strain is clear.

The problem is that the film never turns this into a defined arc. None of the traits established early on inform her actions in a way that feels logical. She is presented as a steady presence in the crisis and highly capable in survival situations, which doesn’t naturally follow from what we know about her. It could have been framed as a surprise, showing her taking to protecting others and improvising solutions to unusual problems with unexpected ease, but the film doesn’t do that. She simply seems to know what to do at any moment, and although the other characters praise her for it, her background never feeds into it.

Hannah, by contrast, is thinly defined, but that works. She is the supportive friend who pulls Sistine out of the drudgery of her life and encourages her to enjoy herself when she rarely has the chance. She doesn’t need to be more than that, and the actors are always believable as best friends who have been constants in each other’s lives.

The other characters are also thinly defined, which isn’t a problem if this is meant to be Sistine’s story. They are sketched clearly enough that their roles in the narrative are easy to place, and each brings something distinct to the ensemble. It doesn’t reach the point where their deaths read as tragic, but the setup is strong.

Tim, in particular, stands out as the one who takes charge in the crisis and works out the best way to increase their chances of survival. His actions flow naturally from his background, and his inevitable loss raises the tension by removing the person with the experience to help them through the situation. Dionne also stands out, though for different reasons. She is the unpleasant presence who expects everyone to follow her orders while contributing nothing herself. If the audience is rooting for anyone to die, it’s her, and the film makes a point of denying that satisfaction.

Perhaps the biggest sin Hungry commits is the long stretch where very little happens. With the hippo absent for so much of the runtime, the characters spend an extended period sitting in a tree to evade its reach while waiting for rescue. That wouldn’t be an issue if this time were used to develop relationships or to show them constantly working out how to escape, but the section is largely passive, and the threat disappears for so long that tension is almost completely drained. Dialogue insists the hippo could attack at any moment and that entering the water would be a death sentence, yet the film offers limited evidence to support that. The pacing suffers badly, and this extended section grinds the film to a halt.

The film also takes itself too seriously. A hippo attacking a tour group is inherently a silly premise, and Hungry would benefit from leaning into schlock with the kind of gruesome and imaginative kills that the premise clearly calls for, along with more absurd character interactions. Walker is the closest it comes to that tone, yet even he is treated with undue seriousness despite an introduction that promises something more playful. The film also makes baffling storytelling choices, including adding lore very late on to explain why the hippo is in this environment. It arrives far too late and isn’t interesting enough to justify its inclusion. It answers questions the audience is unlikely to be asking, especially by that stage.

When the hippo finally appears in full, the CGI is rubbery, but darkness hides most of its limitations and the model is expressive enough that it never becomes a major problem. If the film embraced a schlockier tone, the visual effects would matter even less, because they would sit more naturally within a story that isn’t trying to take itself seriously. Hungry has a strong high‑concept idea and plenty of potential, but it never capitalises on either and ultimately settles into being another forgettable creature feature.

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Verdict

An undercooked movie that wastes its potential and never finds a way to make its high‑concept premise truly land.

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