HUNGRY

You can hide a lot in the dark. There have been several movies about tour boats getting stranded and its tourist complement getting eaten by local wildlife. There are sharks, there are piranhas, there are alligators, there are even frankenfish. This movie has a hippo. That's novel. It's very cute. I like the premise of it and the characters are engaging enough for there to be actual tension, which is great. The casting is fine, not outstanding, but certainly not lacking. And the direction is perfectly serviceable. The hippo is not as good as one would like, and they hide a lot of that by putting it in low light. That might make it more atmospheric for some, but for me it just looks a bit cheap. It's strange how much better movies like Jurassic Park looked so many years ago when the advance of technology is so swift. I'm guessing the artistry just isn't there. Of course, this movie is nowhere near as well budgeted as Jurassic Park, but it only has the one hippo. So it shouldn't be that much of a stretch to actually make it look scary. I still enjoyed the movie and I will recommend it for "tour boats getting stranded and tourist eaten"- aficionados.