Swallowed is a smart, low-fi queer body horror that is as much a love story as it is a nightmare.
The story focuses on the friendship between Benjamin and Dom (newcomers Cooper Koch and Jose Colon) as they celebrate their last night together before Benjamin moves to LA. On their way home, Dom takes a detour to make a little extra cash as a going-away present, but they soon learn they’ll need to carry a mysterious package across the Canadian border. When Alice (Jenna Malone) forces the men to swallow the merchandise, their last night together spirals into a hellscape of drugs, bugs, and violence.
Writer-director Carter Smith first conceived of this project back in 2006 with his short film Bug Crush. Though he always wanted his first feature to be something like Swallowed, he ended up directing The Ruins (2008), a massive studio horror movie with Jenna Malone. Since then, he’s been working his way back to projects with more manageable logistics and called in all sorts of favors to get this latest film off the ground.
Shot in only 15 days, the strength of this movie lies in how Director of Photography, Alexander Lewis frames the excellent performances by both Koch and Colon. These characters are confident in their queerness and in their love for each other, and the camera makes sure to stay on their faces no matter how rough things get (and they get really, really rough). During a Q&A after the premiere, Smith told us he wanted 70% of the movie to be close-ups, which is why he opted for a 4:3 aspect ratio. The result is a screen filled with Benjamin and Dom’s faces, making every moment of lust, fear, and pain feel intimate and intense.
Across from the two protagonists are Jenna Malone and Mark Patton, who both deliver terrifying villainous performances. Malone does a great job of mixing menace and terror as a high-strung middle-woman with an intimidating neon-green manicure. Though she makes despicable decisions in this movie, we also get a sense of the fear that pushes her to such extremes. About halfway through the film, we learn the true source of her fear, none other than queer horror icon Mark Patton.
Patton, if you don’t already know, starred in 1985’s Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, a movie that has since found a lot of love among queer horror fans. The documentary Scream, Queen! showcases the movie’s complicated legacy, tracing Patton’s acting career as a proud gay man whom Hollywood obligated to live in the closet. Smith told us that as a queer kid living in small-town Maine, Freddy’s Revenge was the first time he saw someone like himself in a horror movie (an experience many others share). He wrote this role in Swallowed specifically for Patton, eventually offering him the job via an Instagram DM.
Patton makes a meal out of every scene he’s in, and ramps up the tension in what is already a very stressful scenario. Though he is undeniably the Bad Guy, he still offers a few (very brief) moments in which we get a glimpse of his humanity. Patton’s dynamic with Koch is a masterclass in horror writing and acting. Their scenes showcase how strength, vulnerability, power, and violence interact with each other in all sorts of complicated ways.
Watching this movie at Montreal’s Fantasia Festival was an excellent experience. This kind of crowd relishes anything bizarre, shocking, and gory, and this film did not disappoint us. Swallowed is visceral, intimate, and grimy; it is both extremely unsettling and surprisingly sweet. You will squirm in your seat, you will groan, and you may even cry.
Be careful what you swallow.