‘Hippo’ Panic Fest 2024 Review: Monochromatic Mayhem And Incel Ennui
Mary Beth McAndrews
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The best part about film festivals like Panic Fest is discovering weird little gems that creep into the soft folds of your brain and settle in like a cinematic specter haunting your cerebellum. At this year’s fest, one such gem is Mark H. Rapaport’s feature film debut Hippo. Directed by Rapaport and co-written by Rapaport and Kimball Farley (who also stars in the film), Hippo is a pervert’s bedtime story, the strange love child of Wes Anderson and Michael Haneke. It’s both twee and disturbing, hyper-stylized but grounded in a tale about teenage ennui and toxic masculinity taken to a ridiculous extreme.
The titular Hippo is a teenage boy (Farley) who lives with his barely stable mother Ethel (Eliza Roberts) and his adopted Hungarian sister Buttercup (Lilla Kizlinger). The trio exists in three separate spheres whose orbits intersect, but only briefly, during mealtimes. Other than that, Hippo is typically playing video games and constructing a delusional sense of self-importance while Buttercup dreams of being a mother and their mother flits about the kitchen, barely aware of what’s happening around her. Set in the late 1990s, a time chock full of rage and confusion about the upcoming new millennia, Rapaport captures those attitudes with his teenage characters who feel unmoored in an ever-changing reality. So to combat that, each falls into their own fantasy worlds to cope.
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The film seems to be a bizarre slice of life until Buttercup’s Craigslist hook-up comes over for family dinner and everything turns upside down and backward for the small family. To explain what transpires would ruin Rapaport’s myriad of sickening surprises, but let’s just say you’ll never look at a Super Soaker the same way ever again. Hippo is unafraid of leaning into the weird while also confronting viewers with a strange type of reality that is both fantastical but also grounded, especially as Rapaport starts to reveal a world outside of the family’s little bubble.
At first, Hippo feels like it should exist outside of time and space, a strange family in another dimension far unlike our own. But, importantly, Rapaport and Farley make sure to remind us that this is a very real story despite how weird a path it takes in the third act. There’s a sheen of dark comedy barely hiding the harrowing reality that lies underneath deadpan delivery and Eric Roberts’ charming narration. At any point, if you think too hard about Hippo’s dialogue or Buttercup’s own emotional plight, you start to feel a sneaking nausea growing in the pit of your stomach. The laughs give way to grimaces as the reality of the family’s situation sinks in.
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All three characters are rather deplorable in their own ways, but you also pity them as each is just trying to survive their strange, sad lives. Hippo is especially egregious as his rage is barely contained and any disagreement or questions leads to a temper tantrum from a nearly adult man. This is only met with Ethel’s saccharine cooing about her sweet prince and Buttercup’s blank stares at her oddball family. No one here really understands how to be a person and there’s something strangely endearing about that.
Ultimately, Hippo is the weirdest and most stylized PSA about the need for sex education at an early age, as well as the consequences of spoiling sons for simply being born with a penis. On paper, Hippo is outright weird and seems like another bizarro arthouse examination of adolescents. And yes, that may be true, but it’s also much deeper than boys who don’t understand cum. It’s a cautionary tale about toxic masculinity and what happens when such attitudes are left to fester and ooze unchecked until a person no longer exists in reality. Rapaport and Farle create a fascinating and rather bleak look into teenage ennui through a hyper-stylized lens that both disarms and charms the viewer into sinking into this tiny slice of the world.
Summary
‘Hippo’ is twee and disturbing, a hyper-stylized but grounded in a tale about teenage ennui and toxic masculinity taken to a ridiculous extreme.
