# Hunger (2023) Review: Class Warfare, Plated > Hunger is a sleek Thai kitchen drama about a young street-food cook drawn into Bangkok's elite catering world. Striking to look at, heavy-handed in its message. Canonical: https://celluloidscore.com/reviews/hunger-2023-review/ Published: 2026-07-22 Last updated: 2026-09-24 Author: Kaiser Khan — Founder & Editor Language: English Review basis: direct-viewing Spoilers: none Rating: 3/5 ## Verdict It depends. Chutimon is excellent and the food scenes are gorgeous, but the class satire is blunt. Best for fans of intense kitchen dramas. ## Is Hunger worth watching? **It depends on your appetite for blunt allegory. Hunger is a handsome, tense Thai kitchen drama with a strong lead performance, but its commentary on class is served in such heavy portions that subtlety goes out of the window.** Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying holds the film together and the cooking sequences are genuinely thrilling. The reservations are a long running time, a villain drawn in thick strokes and a message the script repeats rather than develops. ## What is Hunger about? [Hunger](https://celluloidscore.com/movies/hunger-2023/) follows Aoy (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying), a young woman who keeps her family's modest stir-fried noodle shop going in an old Bangkok neighbourhood. She is skilled, tired and quietly wondering whether there is more to life than the wok in front of her. The chance comes when she is recruited to join Hunger, an elite private catering team that cooks extravagant meals for Thailand's wealthiest clients. The team is run by Chef Paul (Nopachai Chaiyanam), a celebrated and ferociously demanding figure whose kitchen runs on humiliation as much as talent. Gunn Svasti co-stars as a member of his crew. Aoy has to decide how much of herself she is willing to trade for a place at the top. Sitisiri Mongkolsiri directs this Thai production in Thai, and it runs 145 minutes. ## Food filmed like a thriller Sitisiri shoots cooking as action. Flames leap, knives flash and plating becomes a tense, wordless performance, with the sound design picking out every sizzle and scrape. The contrast between Aoy's cramped, smoky shop and the gleaming, clinical kitchens of the rich is visual storytelling at its most direct, and the film is often beautiful to look at: glistening meat, dark sauces, steam curling through low light. The strongest scenes are the ones where the pressure builds inside the kitchen. Chef Paul's service is run like a military operation, and the camera captures the fear of a team that knows one mistake can end a career. For stretches, Hunger has the propulsive, anxious energy of a sports film or a heist. ## Chutimon holds the centre Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, who broke through in Bad Genius, gives Aoy an intelligence and restraint that the script does not always match. She shows ambition creeping into a character who starts out simply wanting to feel seen, and her silences carry the conflict between loyalty to home and the pull of recognition. It is a controlled, watchful performance in a film that otherwise likes to shout. Nopachai Chaiyanam makes Chef Paul a genuinely intimidating presence, all cold contempt and theatrical cruelty. The trouble is that the film loves his menace too much; he becomes a symbol more than a person, and his speeches about hunger and class spell out ideas the images have already made clear. ## When the metaphor takes over Hunger's central point, that the rich consume luxury as a display of power while the people who feed them are chewed up, is a sound one, and films from Parasite to The Menu have made it memorably. Here it is delivered with a heavy hand. Scenes of the elite gorging are pushed into grotesque caricature, the dialogue states themes outright, and the second half stretches the story beyond what its characters can bear. Viewers who admire its craft may still find the final stretch more punishing than illuminating. ## Who should watch Hunger? It is best for fans of intense kitchen dramas, viewers interested in Thai cinema beyond horror and action, and anyone who enjoyed Chutimon in Bad Genius. Those looking for a warm food film should look elsewhere; this is a bitter, pressurised watch. Content includes verbal abuse, some bloody moments and scenes designed to disgust, and at over two hours it asks for commitment. Good companions include: - [Bad Genius](https://celluloidscore.com/reviews/bad-genius-2017-review/), the Thai thriller that made Chutimon a star, with a sharper, more entertaining take on class and ambition. - [Parasite](https://celluloidscore.com/reviews/parasite-2019-review/), the definitive modern film about the rich and those who serve them, and far subtler about it. - [How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies](https://celluloidscore.com/reviews/how-to-make-millions-before-grandma-dies-2024-review/), a gentler Thai film in which cooking and money shape family ties. ## The verdict Hunger looks terrific and gives Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying a showcase, but its satire of wealth and ambition is too overstated to leave much of an aftertaste. It is worth seeing for the kitchen sequences and the lead performance, provided you can tolerate a film that tells you exactly what to think. **Rating: 3/5** ## Related title - [Hunger (2023)](https://celluloidscore.com/movies/hunger-2023/) ## Editorial - [Editorial standards](https://celluloidscore.com/about/editorial-policy/) - [Report a correction](https://celluloidscore.com/about/corrections/)