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52%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #5,574
...out of 20,698 movies
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Hunger is a dark exploration into the breakdown of humanity. How far would you go to survive in the most extreme of circumstances? Five strangers awaken to find themselves trapped in an underground dungeon. They soon realize they are the subjects of one man's sadistic experiment to test the depths of a human being's will to survive. As the days go by with no means of escape, their hunger increases as their humanity fades away.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: July 3, 2013
Like most people, I typically enjoy a good meal once or twice a day. I think we can all agree that going without food for too long will make us a little cranky, and I know that personally, I better at least have a damned sandwich every eight hours or so. However, I'm sure that we've all had a day where we just didn't eat anything, at all. Maybe we were sick or maybe we were too busy - whatever the case may be, we just didn't get anything to gnaw on for that day. You know how awful those hunger pains can get? Well, imagine going a month with no food - what would you do to satisfy that craving? That's the premise here, and it sounded intriguing.
The movie immediately throws us into the storyline, and we discover that five people have been abducted and locked in an underground cave with no apparent way out. There's the ultra-smart doctor Jordan (Lori Heuring), a contractor and natural leader in Grant (Linden Ashby), an obnoxious young punk named Luke (Joe Egender), an overly-dramatic former stripper in Anna (Lea Kohl), and the meek and mild Alex (Julian Rojas). These five people don't know each other, have no obvious connections, and have no idea why they are here - hell, there's not even a little puppet on a tricycle to give them some cryptic clues. All they have are four barrels of water, a few tin cups, and a clock on the wall that counts the days instead of the hours.
At some point, a scalpel with a note attached to it is dropped in for them, and the note informs them that the average human body can go thirty days without food before shutting down. Jordan confirms this, and she explains the agony of starving to death in excruciating detail... and then she points out that this scalpel was specifically designed to cut through human tissue and flesh. A "human carving knife", if you will. Now that it's pretty obvious that their captor wants them to turn into savages and consume one another, who will be the first to give in? Who will be the first to get eaten? Will anyone survive?
I thought that this was an interesting concept going in, and I was pretty excited to see how it played out. I'll readily admit that the "X strangers wake up in a room and _____" plot has been done numerous times over, but throwing in the starvation element was pretty original. Also, if you really think about it, it seems like one of the worst ways to die - getting shot or stabbed or whatever would certainly hurt, but if it's fatal, it would be over pretty soon. Starving to death takes a lot longer, and you're in more pain for a much longer time.
That was the one big thing that the movie had going for it, and unfortunately, that was also one of the biggest flaws in the movie. Ignoring the last twenty minutes or so when all hell breaks loose and forgetting a scene or two in which someone eats some insects, the actual hunger / starvation thing is barely played up at all. We don't even get so much as a "Gee, I sure am hungry" line from anybody. We are specifically told by the lead character in the movie that going a couple of weeks without food will lead to excruciating pain, cramps, dizziness, weakness, and a host of other nasty symptoms... and twenty-five days into the ordeal, they're still physically fighting with one another, screaming, and attempting to tear down walls. Take out the scalpel / explanation scene, the insect-eating, and the aforementioned ending, and you would barely realize that hunger was an issue here.
It doesn't help that there is little in the way of makeup or effects to drive the starvation point home. Now, I realize that there aren't many actors in the world who are willing to go to the lengths that Christian Bale did and lose a bunch of weight for a film role, especially for a little-known film such as this. However, the only difference between the characters on the day that they wake up in this hole and their final days in it is the fact that they have a little dirt on them - hell, the guys stay perfectly shaven and the ladies keep their makeup on. I'm not asking for the world here, I just wanted to be convinced that these people were starving, and I felt that doing so would have made the movie much more effective. It's certainly easy enough to imagine the pain that they're going through, but if all we're doing is imagining it... well... why bother with the movie? You can sit there in your chair right now and imagine it, you don't need to sit through these ninety minutes.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on the movie here - after all, I did get some enjoyment out of it, and I'd be lying if I said that I was yawning and watching the clock the entire time. Watching these people devolve from normal humans (scared, but normal) into people who would literally kill for something to eat was pretty interesting, and with few exceptions, the actors made it work. The human element is definitely there and really helps the movie - watching how these people change over time is handled as well as one could hope for, and there are definitely some surprises in store. Gorehounds that are wondering about the obvious "dinner" scenes will be pleased to know that they are nicely done and will definitely satisfy your craving for the red stuff.
Overall, I think that I'm going with an average rating for this one. There's a great idea here and I would have loved to see it succeed, but unfortunately, I felt that the core element of the movie (hunger) wasn't explored enough and was almost an afterthought in the grand scheme of things. The movie would have benefited immensely from more visual elements, or hell, even some "I'm so hungry!" lines from the cast. You will find it fairly entertaining if the plot sounds like something you might be interested in, but it's sort of like Chinese food - you'll enjoy it while you're watching it, but you'll forget all about it just a few hours later. 6/10.
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