Director: Sam P. Green
Year: 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Nature-Run-Amok
Plot:
After opening a special safari exhibit, a dad and his daughter prepare to bring a new hippo family into the confines to keep them safe, but when a group of poachers arrives to take the creatures for themselves, it forces the group to fight them off to save the animals.
Review:
This was a generally disappointing effort without much going for it. Some of the only real positive points here come from the interactions that take place with the couple trying to keep the hippos calm and tranquil in their cage. This comes off rather well in the first half as the series of interactions trying to calm the creatures down while the creatures randomly attack the group, leading to some solid interactions and gore involving the creatures’ massive size being used to its advantage, injuring and mutilating them. Likewise, the fact that the second half revolves around a series of brawls and interactions involving the group coming across the team of poachers and fighting them across the zoo trying to keep them from taking the group hostage makes for some interesting aspects fighting each other and getting the upperhand in various interactions, with the hippo getting involved at select points to turn the tide inadvertently. These all make for a few positives.
There are quite a few problems with this one. The main issue with this one comes from the inherently slow and sluggish pacing that makes everything immensely slow-going before anything actually happens. With the early exploits about the zoo operations, the different working conditions at the safari, trying to maintain the animals in their care, or dealing with other forms of personal issues involving the different personalities at play within the safari compound, it takes a while before the creatures are even brought to bear on the story. The characters aren’t that impressive or enjoyable and the drama is way too cliche to be all that interesting as the hippo manages to act wild and crazy without raising any suspicions for what he’s trying to do so the means of trying to act this way as long as he does so this subterfuge makes for a rather bizarre setup that just eats up time overall.
As well, there’s also the generally problematic storyline, where it never makes any sense during what happens throughout here. Far too much of what takes place here just has no sense of cohesion behind it, from the operation to take the hippo out of the compound, why they arrive there at the beginning under false pretenses, or what kind of tracking process is being down to look into the missing hippo which are handled with a rather bizarre sense of progression involving what leads to the main part of the second half involving hunting down the poacher rather than the hippo. The main story makes for a series of Action-movie encounters where they try to fight off the powers, but have nothing to do with the hippo going on the loose, so it’s a massively mismarketed affair as they’re barely worthwhile. These all manage to hold this one down overall.
Overview: */5
An intriguing if overall misguided and problematic genre effort, most of this one comes across as a mismarketed type of feature that has some minor positives overwhelmed by some big negatives. Those who are fine with these issues or who are curious about it will have the most to get out of this, while most others out there should heed extreme caution.
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