Never before would I have thought that seeing someone down a screwdriver would pain me so much. Carlo Mirabella-Davis's Swallow makes for just that right amount of pain, as this movie truly creeped me out with its use of visual storytelling. There is a lot to love about this movie and although I believed going in that it was more focused on body horror, the psychological elements definitely carried enough weight to make that side of the story interesting. Accompanied by a fantastic performance from the lead and some stunning cinematography, I was thoroughly squirmish during this entire runtime. This might be the first time I have ever thought this, but I actually think this film could have benefitted from more graphic imagery in order to get its point across. Despite this film not quite living up to the grotesque reputation I thought it would, there is a lot of great things going on with this psychological story and the filmmakers make sure that some of these scenes are truly hard to swallow.
Hunter Conrad (Haley Bennett), after coming to terms with her tragic past, marries the love of her life Richie (Austin Stowell) and gets pregnant to start a family. However, when she is left in the house alone, she develops a strange affliction towards swallowing peculiar objects and fights to reclaim herself from her addiction to save her relationships. This film, written and directed by Carlo Mirabella-Davis, is a solid exploration into strange addictions and how it can affect the people around you. The only thing I knew of this film going in was that the main character Hunter was addicted to swallowing strange things such as marbles, thumbtacks, and dirt, but I did not know of the psychological elements behind the writing. This film does body horror decently well and while nothing too explicit is ever shown, enough context is given to really put Hunter's internal pain on display. I have never been a huge fan of the body horror genre but in this film's case, it actually could have used more. The scenes that made up the majority of this film's titular theme were fantastic and I could really feel the pain in the involuntary swallowing that Hunter went through. From the audience's point of view, I could really tell that she never meant to hurt her relationships or even herself but just that the boredom and often loneliness she experienced contributed to her desire for literally anything exciting. What I did not think worked as well, however, was the examination into Hunter's past and why she grew this addiction. Enough of the writing is dedicated to explaining Hunter's upbringing and her traumatizing relationship with her mother and father but nothing was ever really related to her oral habit. I definitely would have liked to have seen more connection between the two and this would have made the psychological aspect of the script much tighter and more concise.
A couple of the minor subplots and supporting characters throughout Swallow could have used a bit more depth to them but these are made up for by the performance from Haley Bennett. She is an absolutely phenomenal actress and while this is the first thing I have ever seen her in, it is obvious how capable she is of carrying an interesting story. Innocent housewife turned addict turned psychiatric patient was such a wild ride of development for the character of Hunter and I feel that Bennett locked it down with ease. So many of this movie's scenes were carried by her and without her character's newfound agency when she ran away, Bennett's performance could have been much more stoic. Carlo Mirabella-Davis's direction also proves to be one of the film's strong points. Despite his script needing a bit of work to be more compelling, he carries along the pace of this story with quite an amount of skill. No moment is wasted and every scene has so much weight to it that meant a lot for the development of the overall story. Mirabella-Davis also knows when to imbue just the right amount of sexuality, humor, and horror in his story to make it very effective. The technical piece that really brought Swallow together, however, was the cinematography from Katelin Arizmendi. Her gorgeous camerawork was on display from frame one and while center framing is used very often nowadays to characterize eerieness, her mastery of this was put into good use. The way that Arizmendi shoots food throughout this film is also extraordinary and she manages to actually make some very appetizing plates look horrendous. She shoots all of the objects that Hunter swallows and the normal food cooked throughout the story in a similar fashion and over time, the food became almost repulsive. Her skills as a DP really shine in this film as the leading cause of its fantastic visual imagery. This whole movie could have been silent with just Arizmendi telling the story with her shots and it would have been equally, if not more, effective.
Swallow is quite an interesting psychological film that, while ambitious, never really reaches the horrific heights that I had imagined. That does not detract from how effective the movie is, however, and I really did enjoy so many parts of this. Bennett is incredible throughout this entire film and I really appreciated what she did with this character to also make it such a compelling character study of someone with this real compulsion. And like I had mentioned before (I might not ever say this again), this film could have definitely used some more swallowing.
My Rating: ★★★½
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