Swallow is a horror thriller film directed by Carlo Mirabella-Davis. The plot sees often pushed to the side wife Hunter (Haley Bennet), start to eat inedible objects as a coping mechanism for her failing marriage and her fears about giving birth to a child. The horror comes from the very real situational drama/ tension and Hunter’s descent into mental illness.
This film will make you wince, watching a pregnant woman eating a nail is an uncomfortable sight and it only gets worse from there. I think calling this film a horror film might be a misclassification, which might be reductive to the film overall. I certainly understand how people could view it as a horror film, but it fits far better as a drama thriller.
This film has a very similar vibe to The Invisible Man from earlier this year, it deals with very similar themes. Hunters relationship with her husband starts off bad and ends up hellish. The real ‘horror’ of the film as I said would be the way Hunter’s husband and his family treat her; cycles of abuse and escape are both key themes to this film.
I think though this film certainly is original, I have never seen anything like it before, there isn’t enough plot to really justify the runtime. I often pick apart films because of pacing issues and I do this because I think an overly long film is terrible and turns me off. All the best films are tight, every second counts, you can’t look away, however that is not something I can say for this film. This film could have done with a tighter edit, it had some pacing issues, but they weren’t terrible.
Overall, it is a deeply unique quirky film, that I think is wrongly classified as a horror, though there certainly are many horrifying parts of it this is far more of a drama; if slow burn is your thing, I would say it is a must watch.
Pros.
Haley Bennet is good.
The themes.
The uniqueness.
It makes you wince.
Cons.
It could have been tighter, and some bits made me lose interest a bit.
4/5
Reviewed by Luke
Another Millennial Reviewer 