Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Hunger’

Written by Scott Edwards 

If you are put into an extreme situation, how would you handle it?  Most of us believe that we would be just fine, but never having to face it up close and personal, it is hard to speak to what will really happen. When your life is on the line, how far would you go to protect yourself and ensure that you will survive? There are several people that have faced something so dramatic that it has changed them forever and they will never be able to return to their normal lives with what they have done. Even trying to repress these memories will not make you forget what you have been through as there is always something in the back of your head telling you that you did wrong.

Waking up in a pitch black room, Jordan hears a woman sobbing and asking for help. With no memory of how she got there, she is trying to navigate using the walls and floor to help the other woman. Running into Grant on her search, who is in the same boat as she is, Jordan does not know if she should trust him, but with the calls for help from the other side of the room, she stops worrying about herself and puts the worry on the others that are trapped with her. Finding a young man on the floor, covered with blood, Jordan is able to see if he is still alive, but there is another stranger in the room with her, making it a group of five that are trapped in the darkness.

Waiting two days in the darkness with no food or drink, the group is starting to get fed up, but then someone turns the lights on. Being able to see everyone that is trapped in the rocky cavern, they start to search for a way out. Finding a wooden door, Grant and Luke are able to break it open and the group finds drums of water and find out that they will be trapped in their cage for some time. Looking for another way out of their prison, Grant starts digging at a bricked off portion of the cavern as the group starts to get to know each other better. Trying to find a common bond between them all, Jordan leads the conversation and finds out that only one of her fellow prisoners is not guilty of killing someone. Trying to find a way out of their underground cell is hard enough, but a gift from above has come into their midst and the group is faced with their next hard decision.

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​A surgical knife with a note attached to it that simply states a normal human can go without eating for thirty days and that’s all, and the group does not know what to do. With a day clock ticking away, the group believes that they will have to survive the thirty days and will be let go, but their unknown captor is working on something else. Studying his prisoners from above, he is taking notes, eating and drinking and watching for the first person to crack and turn to cannibalism. As each member of the group below has their own demons to face, they are now faced with starvation if they are not willing to take their games to the next level. As their bodies start getting deprived of the essential proteins to survive, their animal instincts start to take over and need to find a way to live until the clock stops running.

Hunger follows a group of strangers that have been pulled from their everyday lives and put into an underground cavern with no chance of escape. With their captor playing them the entire time, they want to find out why they are being held against their will, but they never get a response. As each member of the group starts to feel the effects of starvation, they become much more like animals and have to find a way to feed their starving bodies. Watching anxiously from above, their captor is taking notes and enjoying how his experiment is going since he was put in a similar situation and forced to do something to survive that he has to justify in his own mind. Thinking that they will be released after thirty days in captivity, the group tries to survive without incident, but sooner or later, the need to eat will always take over, but will everyone be willing to change their lifestyle to survive?

This is a hard subject for many people, as survival is human instinct and we all have things that we are willing to do to make sure we are okay. But eating a person is usually not on the list if there are other options available. What if all of the options have been taken away from you? Would you even consider killing another human to survive… and eat them if it meant that you would live? A strange question that most people never have had to face, and hopefully never will. This movie shows you how strong your body really is and explains that it might not be up to you once it starts going down one of the darkest paths imaginable. Stay Scared.

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