Definitely satisfying, but hungry for more.

Rachel and I caught The Hunger Games last weekend. Neither of us had read the book, but I was pretty eager to see it regardless. I’d heard great things, and when we saw that it was playing on three screens at Empire Theatres in Charlottetown, we figured it wouldn’t be completely packed.

I’m not going to completely analyze the film here, because there’s more than enough of that going on online. Like most, I liked it quite a bit. I thought about it for days, and am interested in seeing where the rest of the series goes. Performances, directing, editing were all great.

I am going to highlight one thing that left me wanting a little more, though: I know this is based on a YA novel, and I’m aware that thematically, it’s pretty similar. That said, this movie is about children and teenagers who are taken from their homes and forced to kill each other for wealthy folks enjoyment. That concept is absolutely horrifying, and this horror is largely ignored. At the very least, it’s never fully examined, and because of that, the characters seem pretty flat.

I’m not a fan of disturbing cinema, and I know there’s other films which tackle this subject much more aggressively (Battle Royale is now near the top of my to-see list), but to ignore it the way The Hunger Games did left me looking for a little more when I walked out of the theatre.