[Panic Fest 2020 Review] Swallow is a Highly Recommended Exercise in Uncomfortability

Swallow begins with almost too-on-the-nose imagery of a farm-to-table lamb preparation as our protagonist Hunter (Haley Bennett) stands, perfectly coiffed, on her balcony, overlooking an infinity pool and the surrounding wilderness. It’s a striking opening, if a bit eye-rolling in its intention. A woman named Hunter will become the prey, just as the unknowing lambs will be processed into food for rich consumption. It’s a metaphor used so often it becomes a parody of itself and it set me up to fear that the rest of the film would be too surface level in intention. 

Thankfully, surface-level metaphors aren’t on the menu for Swallow. Writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s debut feature is a fantastically deep and thematic look at a woman struggling against a patriarchal family that just wants her for the baby in her womb. Yes, Hunter is pregnant.

You could say she’s barefoot and pregnant, but that wouldn’t be very uppercrust. Nor would it be appropriate, since she channels January Jones in Mad Men in the level of devotion she has to keeping her beau’s house institutionally clean and, well, perfect.  Yes, she vacuums in high heels. She lovingly prepares dinners as if they were artistic expressions for her husband Richie (Austin Stowell) to come home to. She speaks with that passive lilt to her voice; all breathless anticipation and undramatic conversation. “Did you miss me?” she asks. And could we put in a certain kind of flower around the pool? 

Richie barely listens.   

In fact, no one really listens to Hunter. The only interactions Hunter has outside of her husband and the help are with Richie’s mother Katherine (Elizabeth Marvel) and his father Michael (David Rasche). And neither of them give a damn what she has to say. This is brought to stark relief at a fancy dinner celebrating Hunter’s pregnancy where, after the cursory hugs, the conversation completely shuts out Hunter, who’s there to be a pretty, silent incubator for the family’s future. 

That’s when it happens. Hunter, ignored by the rest of the table, finds herself curiously drawn to the sound of crunching ice. As she delicately crushes the cubes between her teeth, laughing at the gentle joy they bring her, the conversation slows and she finds three sets of eyes staring at her with surprise, verging on disdain. It’s the first time the family seems to even admit she’s there. And they find that annoying. 

Soon, Hunter finds herself drawn to other objects. First, it’s a marble she finds that she holds gently between her fingers before popping it in her mouth, savoring its feel, before swallowing. These little, hidden acts of rebellion soon inflate to eating a variety of metal objects, some of which, like the thumbtack the film’s marketing leans into, are dangerous. Before you know it, a war of aggression erupts over Richie’s precious incubator and her unborn kid. 

Haley Bennett turns in a star-making performance here with her nuanced and subtle depiction of a woman experiencing a disorder called pica but it never feels reductive. Instead, it uses a disorder as a way of examining a woman under complete house arrest. Hunter has absolutely no control over her life; hell, she has to ask permission to change up the flowers by the pool. It’s Richie’s house. It’s Richie’s life. It’s Richie’s baby. She’s only allowed to live there.

Bennett’s fascinating realization of Hunter’s internal thought process hinges on subtle changes in Hunter’s personality and the way her painted doll face cracks at times. It’s a reverse Stepford Wives story. By the time we’ve met Hunter, she’s been inducted into this family and her autonomy has been erased. She cooks. She cleans. Prepares extravagant food where her flair as an artist comes through (and is similarly ignored). The entire time, she’s done up to a modern example of a stereotypical 50s housewife. Dolled up and ready for a night at the opera at a moment’s notice.

When Richie is on the way home, she smooths out her blouse or skirt and sits on the couch, awaiting his return. She’s a lifelike doll, waiting for her man to come home. A literal trophy wife, emphasis on trophy. Coiffed. Beautiful. But an object to be held, used and presented to the world. So when she does something like crunch ice at a dinner or when her ultrasound shows a mess of metal objects swimming in her stomach, it breaks that illusion. And her family-in-law does not like to be reminded she’s a being.

One particular conversation between Katherine and Hunter really hits home the circular nature of women’s roles in the family as she tells Hunter to just fake it. Fake it until you’ve made it. The hidden implication is fake it until you can’t tell the difference anymore.

A movie like Swallow could go full exploitation and I was initially afraid it would be one gross-out after another. The summary reads like an adaptation of a Chuck Palahniuk book; perhaps an untold short story in his Haunted collection. But Mirabella-Davis wisely isn’t so interested in the puerile fascination of what eating the objects would do to Hunter’s inside. The aftermath is hinted at. Blood in the toilet, stomach pains. But as the narrative continues, all he has to show is the objects, laid out in a ceremonial fashion, to build tension and horror. 

The production design by Erin Magill, meanwhile, is stunning and luscious. The house, where the majority of the action is set, is opulent and and modern but as the film continues, it slowly transforms to look more like an institution. A gilded cage. Clean and sterilized; a perfectly manufactured dollhouse whose characters are just as immovable and positioned just so. It’s helped along by the crisp cinematography by Katelin Arizemendi, who also brought a fantastic eye to Cam. It all comes together to elevate a very subtle and simple story of rebellion to something far more interesting. 

The direction the story goes, as we learn more about Hunter and get hints about her life prior to her marriage, is a fascinating examination of trauma. Simultaneously enthralling and unnerving, Swallow revels in the uncomfortable. Whether that’s eating a tack or forcing us and our heroine to face her past.

It’s a highly recommended slowburn.