Ruby’s girlfriend regains consciousness in the middle of a white room, and her knees are rewound with bandages. Next to the girl sits a patched dart Tom, who is an unscrupulous kidnapper. Ruby has only one way to salvation - to include the actress and play along with the maniac.
British chamber thriller, where the action takes place in one room, but you will not miss a minute. It is an intellectual film built on three stages of perception. The first is that the viewer sees, thinks and analyzes everything that happens on the screen. The second is that the viewer tries to put all the pieces of history together and understand what is happening. The third - after viewing, you should scroll through everything you see in your head again so that the puzzle is formed correctly. No symbolism or metaphor, only pure psychology and attention to the details scattered throughout the tape.
The psychological confrontation of Ruby and Tom, Stockholm syndrome, pretense, imaginary help, false or real memories - the viewer from the very first minutes gets into the field of disinformation, where you will have to build assumptions from excerpts of the dialogues of the main characters and their behavior. The film deliberately generates contradictions and inconsistencies, forcing to doubt the integrity of the memories of the hostage, then justifying the kidnapper, then making sure that the boy leads everyone by the nose.
The title of the film “Hippopotamus” also suggests that peaceful animals, but irritated, become very dangerous (just remember this). By the way, the tape won the main prize at the Monthly Film Festival (TMFF) in 2018.
The moral is: with kidnapping, the game will not bring good.
As a result, a smart thriller, closely intertwined with psychology.
7 out of 10