“The only cute hippo is a dead hippo.”
Written and directed by James Nunn, 2026’s Hungry is a surprisingly well done hippo horror film. While I’ve come across a number of articles and social media posts touting the film as a horror adaptation of the classic Hungry Hungry Hippos game, the only resemblance or mild reference to the Milton Bradley/Hasbro game is the title itself. For what it’s worth, an animated film version of the game has apparently been around since 2012, but hasn’t come to fruition yet.
In the James Nunn film, a group of tourists and their boat captain head out into the Louisiana swamps just outside of New Orleans. One of the tourists, hoping to surprise her kids, tips the captain three hundred dollars to make sure that the group sees the biggest alligator in the swamp. The captain goes off course to find the alligator, but finds its mutilated remains instead. The boat is then attack by an unseen creature in the water. The group all manage to make it into the safety of the trees, but the captain is severely wounded during the rush to the trees. As time drags by, the group realizes that the creature that attacked them is a hippopotamus. The owner of the swamp tour heads out to find his missing boat, captain, and tourists, and everyone fights to survive the hungry hippo!
This film does an amazing job of making the viewer sympathize with most of the tourists and the swamp tour captain and owner. This is rare for a horror film, even the ones produced by the big studios, as most of them load up the cast with forgettable or unlikable characters that you want to see get ripped to pieces. In Hungry, though, you feel for the characters that die and the survivors as well. Is there one or two people that deserve to get offed in the film? Absolutely, but this film plays with viewer emotions in ways that I haven’t experienced in many horror films.
The film has a strong cast that includes Madison Davenport, Tracey Bonner, Joaquim de Almeida, Michel Curiel, Samantha Coughlan, Olivia Bernstone, River Codack, and Jim Meskimen. Your cheer and feel for the bulk of the cast, especially Meskimen and Davenport, but you also can’t wait for one particular character to meet their untimely end. The film uses a lot of practical effects for closeup shots of the hippopotamus and these scenes are excellent. Things get shaky when the hippo is created with CGI in some of the scenes. This is forgivable, though, due to the fact that the film is so strong in pretty much every other way. It does drag a tad at certain points but it is, overall, a very good film.
I definitely recommend Hungry. It’s currently available on Amazon Prime. It’s a cool thriller that gets the most out of its cast and special effects department. Thanks for checking out my review, now go watch Hungry!
