EIFF 2026 Review: Hungry – “made by people who clearly love a good monster movie”

Directed by James Nunn
Starring Madison Davenport, Tracey Bonner, Joaquim de Almeida, Michel Curiel, Samantha Coughlan, Olivia Bernstone, Jim Meskimen, River Codack

This was part of the Midnight Madness where, as the film festival organisers put it, we watch “f**ked up movies”, and the “Hungry” is, as some of you will have guessed, is as in the old family game “Hungry Hungry Hippos”, but of course they can’t use that title for their movie (which does indeed feature ravenous hippos!), so hence “Hungry”. We’ve had sharks, giant snakes, crocs and gators and piranhas, but this time, down in the deepest bayou country, there are feral hippopotami!!

Yes, angry, feral hippos – local legend in the swamplands around New Orleans holds that in the early twentieth century, there was a problem with cattle, so someone had the bright idea to import hippopotami from Africa, with an idea they’d be better suited to the conditions in the state, then breed them for slaughter. But that’s just a legend, right? Right?

Sistine (Madison Davenport) is trying to have a break with her bestie, Hannah (Olivia Bernstone) in New Orleans. Struggling to look after her ill mother, pay the mounting medical bills and hold down a job with a jerk employer (who phones her for work during her holiday, yes, he is that big a swine). Hannah meets Rodrigo (Michel Curiel) and his boss Walker (veteran actor Joaquim de Almeda), who runs swamp tours, with guaranteed views of the state’s alligators, and she decides to book the pair of them on the tour to distract Sistine (who isn’t keen on it, but is talked into it.

Next morning, hungover, they join the tour, alongside a family group and a lone businesswoman, Dionne (Tracey Bonner). Unknown to all aboard, Dionne has promised her kids a photo of the biggest alligator in the swamps, but this means going off the usual routes for tour boats, so she covertly bribes Rodrigo, who is in charge of the boat, to take them to a likely site. Luckily for them the biggest alligator is geo-tagged, so they can focus in easily on his location… Except he isn’t there. What they don’t know, but we do because it was in the opening sequence, was we saw a giant gator hunting in the swamps, only to be ambushed by something bigger and more powerful…

They soon find their gator – well, bits of it. And they are understandably worried about what the hell could take down such an enormous apex predator in its own environment? And, well, I’m pretty sure that those of you who, like me, enjoy a fun creature feature will guess what happens next – there’s an attack by a largely unseen something, they are stranded, the fact they are well off the normal tour boat route so not likely to be spotted easily comes out among recriminations, and people start being picked off…

Like I said, I think most of us know how this is going to go, the numbers are going to be reduced, one by one, there will be sudden threats and the equally sudden relief of that tension when they survive, at least until the next incident. Plans to help themselves if no rescue turn up are formulated, ideas exchanged, and meanwhile they know they are in constant mortal danger. The game now becomes who will make it through and who is going to be chomped??

There’s the usual roster of characters, the ones you like and root for to survive, the ones you suspect will die in some sort of heroic attempt to save them all, and of course there are ones you think deserve to be chomped up. Walker a hunter as well as tour guide, is an obvious stand-in for Quint from Jaws, and delights in telling them that hippos are mostly vegetarian, and they’re not trying to eat you for food, like most predators, they are doing it for fun!

So no, other than being hippos, there isn’t a lot new in this creature feature, but it’s not trying to pretend it is rewriting the sub-genre, it’s rolling with it, and it is inviting us to roll with it too. This is made by people who clearly love a good monster movie, know the rules, know what we expect, and are happy to serve it up. It may not break any moulds, but it knows what it is doing, and who its audience is – this is one to watch, late evening, with your friends and some pizza and food and just laugh and shriek, and enjoy it. I think my only surprise here was, that despite a number of kills, the gore level is fairly low, but then it does feel like they’re going for an uncomplicated, fun beast feature.

Hungry will appear on Sky Cinema in September.