Hippopotamus (2018)

An abducted woman wakes up in a room with no memory of how she got there while her kidnapper keeps giving her, allegedly, painkillers.

Interesting, yet poorly executed. The positive one-word or one-line reviews are placed on the films’ posters as part of the marketing and are meant to draw viewers in and excite them before they even go to the cinema or hit “play” at home. Hippopotamus‘ poster serves that very same goal. Does it live up to the expectations, though?

From an audiovisual point of view, the ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) and sound mixing are poor. That stands out immediately, it doesn’t get any better throughout so I move on. From a visual point of view, it is also poor. In the 20th minute, there are a few well-edited dolly shots (a shot pattern that repeats about 20′ later and then 30′ after that), but then the poor directing activity continues. Ingvild Deila’s and Stuart Mortimer’s acting is decent, but the characters seem to interact flatly, and the bad ADR only distracts the audience’s attention anyway. The real saviour of the film – at least visually – is the editing.

From the script’s point of view, the slow-burn build-up technique only works if it amounts to something. That applies, especially to scripts where the plot unfolds in a single location. Hippopotamus ticks both boxes, but producer/writer/editor/director Edward A. Palmer leaves it to the point that the audience’s attention has long wandered off. By the time the film makes it to the resolution, it is already late. Palmer seems to have had a vision that he pieced together well, but the pieces proved problematic.

If you manage to make it up to the last part of the second act, you’ll be the judge of whether it was worth it or not. Personally, I didn’t face the twist as a revelatory experience. Far from it. After all the previous “buts” mentioned above though, I’ll throw in a positive one. Making any film is not an easy task. Every film faces difficulties, from nano-budgets to tentpoles, and I’m sure Hippopotamus was not short of problems. No one can accuse a film where its cast and crew were paid next to nothing or nothing that they haven’t done a decent job. The fact that they managed to complete it and make it to Amazon Prime is a humongous achievement if you ask me. Hippopotamus easily stands out on the platform as one of the best achievements in that genre.

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