Hollywood, it’s time to make the definitive hippopotamus horror movie
After IT and Get Out last year, and with Quiet Place, Hereditary and another installment in the Halloween franchise all still to come in 2018, horror movies are having a moment. It’s time for Hollywood to capitalize on this momentum and make a unique film the genre is missing: a gory “person-vs.-nature” horror movie, in the vein of Jaws, about a hippo.
Like Jaws, this film — let’s call it Holy Shit, Help, I’m Scared of Hippos, or HSHISOP — can have a lasting effect long after viewers leave the theater. To this day, people are scared to go into the ocean and hate sharks because of the “Jaws effect.” But hippos are even more dangerous than sharks. In Africa, an average of 2,900 people are killed every year by hippos, compared to six killed worldwide by sharks, according to Mother Nature Network.
So, let’s establish a premise, not altogether different from the game Zooicide. Picture a group of seven foolish teenagers breaking into a massive hippo sanctuary after hours (to be clear, the sanctuary is massive, and so are the hippos). They’ve made a sport of breaking into zoos — we get a montage of times they’ve done it before. In the past, they snuck in and stole from the chimpanzees and tried to play with sleeping koalas. But tonight, they have two hippopotamus-related plans: 1. They shaved their guinea pig and want to see if it really looks like a hippo, and 2. They want to ride a hippo.
Naturally, our protagonists have gotten cocky from their prior successes. They’re about as unlikable as the thieving leads in Don’t Breathe. They go in without doing research and break right into the hippo sanctuary. They split up and get lost — again, this is a massive sanctuary — before a group of three stumbles upon a baby hippo and start agitating it. Its cries bring forth a protective adult hippo who rushes forth and attacks. The adult kills the teens and, unbeknownst to the rest of the group, begins hunting them as well.
Fill in the rest with some close calls, trickeration and the guinea pig making a run for it and you’ve got yourself a smash hit.
Hippos are the perfect fodder for a horror film. They’re cute and seemingly nonthreatening.
Like horror movies featuring children’s toys or dolls, the feeling of betrayal after being attacked by a devious hippo is almost worse than actually being attacked by one (presumably).
Additionally, hippos are masters of disguise, able to look just like rocks when submerged in the water. This poses a problem because hippos are territorial, known to attack if threatened.
Perhaps most importantly, they’re powerful.
Look at it crush that watermelon! The hippo does it so effortlessly! Combine that chomp power with incredible speed (20 miles per hour at a sprint) for a 4,000-pound animal, and you’ve got yourself the perfect horror movie adversary. Plus, hippos have incredibly thick skin, meaning that our protagonists in HSHISOP need special weapons to defend themselves.
And, if the sheer force of nature that is an angry hippo somehow doesn’t scare you — what next, you think rattlesnakes are cuddly, you monster? — then maybe this will:
That’s right. This is actual recorded evidence of hippos eating other hippos. If you read the study, you’ll see that the cannibalistic hippos didn’t even suffer from a shortage of nutritional options. They literally just wanted to eat another hippo! Now, imagine the scene in HSHISOP. With our wily, somehow-alive, somehow-still-unlikable protagonists trying to make their escape after already having witnessed the lead hippo killing their friends, the group of fools stumbles upon a horrifying scene. Picture their — and your — terror as they realize what they’re up against: a hippo willing to eat members of its own species just for sport.
So, essentially, we’re combining Jaws, Zooicide and Jurassic Park with Hannibal.
Hollywood, if you’re intrigued by this $500 million idea, or simply want to make a movie about the guy so scared of hippos he wants to make a movie about them, just contact me.
