Swallow Is About the Horrors of a Body in Isolation – Vulture

In a time when were forced to experience new movies from the questionable comforts of our homes, Haley Bennetts role as a woman undone hits hard. Photo: Courtesy of IFC Films

The first time Hunter (Haley Bennett) swallows something she shouldnt, its framed like an act of communion. Or as though shes been briefly touched by the divine, the silence of the empty house around her replaced by distant sounds of a seaside where a child is at play. The object of her fixation is a marble that she picks out from a display case as though called to it and that she holds up to the light before contemplatively putting it in her mouth and then, finally, gulping it down. Afterward, she has the quiet glow of someone whos accomplished something which, in a warped way, she has. Shes disrupted the placid surface of her existence, which otherwise involves days spent in picturesque solitude while her husband, Richie (Austin Stowell), is at work. Their Hudson River Valley home enfolds her like protective casing while she gestates what he and his family clearly think of as his, not their, child.

But shes only striving to keep up that appearance of mint condition. Swallow, the impressive first scripted feature from Carlo Mirabella-Davis, is about a case of pica, a psychological disorder that involves urges to eat nonfood items and that can be triggered by pregnancy as well as by stress. In that sense, its a horror film, because the things that Hunter feels compelled to consume in secret are increasingly disturbing. There is, for instance, a thumbtack, which doesnt go down easily and which, were reminded by a later glimpse of blood in the bathroom, has likely done damage all the way through her digestive system before making a wince-worthy exit. Swallow isnt body horror in the Cronenberg sense, but it is about the horrors a body can prove capable of, especially for someone trying to maintain an image of unruffled perfection that leads her to donning gloves to remove the evidence of her illicit habit from the toilet bowl.

Its the setup for a portrait of a breakdown, for an installment of that venerable, sadism-inflected mini-genre that is the portrait of a woman coming undone, often in isolation. And Hunter is, frequently, alone in that tasteful mid-century-modern house until a nurse (Laith Nakli) is hired to guard her, or at least guard the fetus shes carrying, from her own compulsions. In her vintage-esque outfits, Hunter feels unstuck in time, like a representative of any number of women across decades whove been deemed unworthy caretakers of their own bodies. She slowly splinters under a bombardment of casual slights from her husband and his family.

But the quiet astonishment of Swallow comes from the fact that it actually turns out not to be about a breakdown but a breakthrough. Itd be wrong to say that Hunters pica saves her, but it does force her to awaken from the numb passivity with which shes been drifting through life, grounding her more and more in her own fallible, fecund flesh. Swallow begins dreamlike, with its main character moving behind the giant windows of the house like shes been sealed up inside a terrarium. But realism creeps in as it goes along, as Hunters secret comes out, as she shifts from being a kind of archetype of a suppressed spouse and becomes a fully fledged character with a background that offers some understanding of how she ended up where she is. Her habit of introducing foreign things into her body parallels her slowly dawning realization that theres something already inside her that she doesnt want there.

Theres this conversation that flares up every few months online about the term elevated horror, which has been understandably criticized for implying that theres such a thing as regular horror thats lesser than and not worth taking seriously. But a film like Swallow makes a case for the need for some sort of label, maybe a less loaded alternative, to signal that somethings scares arent of the traditional sort. Theres a type of devoted fan who wouldnt consider Swallow horror at all, though thats what it is, at heart. Its about a woman sleepwalking toward doom, even if that doom doesnt involve the supernatural or a knife-wielding slasher. Swallow shares commonalities with The Invisible Man, another recent movie about a woman in a controlling marriage that offers a more standard type of thrill both films are suddenly available to watch in our homes, with some help from the coronavirus. But while The Invisible Man was built around its clever set pieces rather than its characters, Swallow is led by its protagonists mental and emotional state. It takes place in a landscape thats largely internal but thats territory that can be just as filled with darkness and dread as a forbidding mansion.

Swallow hit theaters on March 6 but is available to rent on iTunes and Prime.

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Swallow Is About the Horrors of a Body in Isolation - Vulture

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero