Get Outta da House Cinema 2023 - The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

As we head into the school holidays for the end of 2023, this may be my last film review for a very patchy year of films.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is 100% for the older teens on school holidays as we head into a prequel for 2012's The Hunger Games OG trilogy.

Based on the 2020 novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, this is the fifth instalment in The Hunger Games film series. 

Starring a fairly impressive all-star cast of Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, and Viola Davis. 

In the Hunger Games universe, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is set 64 years before the events of the first film.

Following the events that lead a young Coriolanus Snow on the path to becoming the tyrannical leader of Panem, including his relationship with the Hunger Games District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird during the 10th Hunger Games. Now Ms Lucy Gray sings a lot during this close to three hour film.

With commercials and Hoyts promos, this film is very close to three hours in run time.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes comes a long while after the first film. I had no idea of what happened in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 back in 2015, so to remember the first films plot. That was tough.

Look visually the film was good. It was tense, had some interesting themes from modern life. Also a splash of super predictable romance. Not predictable, the amount of singing from one of the leads in the film.

Overall like 2023 in my cinema series, Get Outta da House Cinema 2023, this year has been passable, maybe not super memorable but my best of film will drop soon. However for now The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes playing its third or fourth week, passes at 2.5 stars.

I think it's also still at the new Sydney IMAX where I was originally meant to see this film. Beware though, tickets at Sydney's IMAX are not cheap. Consumer warning people!