Swallow is a 2019 psychological thriller film written and directed by Carlo Mirabella-Davis and starring Haley Bennett, Austin Stowell, Elizabeth Marvel, David Rasche, and Denis O'Hare.
Its plot follows a young woman who, emotionally stifled in her marriage and domestic life, develops an impulse to consume inedible objects.
After undergoing surgery to remove the screwdriver, Michael and Katherine arrange to have Hunter committed to a psychiatric hospital for the next seven months until she delivers the baby, threatening that Richie will divorce her.
Mirabella-Davis wanted to make a film about his grandmother's experience, but he realized that hand washing, her primary OCD symptom, was not very cinematic.
[4][5][6] In May 2018, Haley Bennett, Austin Stowell, Elizabeth Marvel, David Rasche and Denis O'Hare joined the cast of the film.
Joe Wright, Bennett, Constantin Briest, Johann Comte, Pierre Mazars, Eric Tavitian and Sam Bisbee were named executive producers.
He also has compared the home's nearby river to a "mood ring", representing freedom, power and danger, a stark contrast to the powerless life that protagonist Hunter finds herself living.
[15] It tied for the highest-grossing film in the U.S. for the week of April 17, 2020, though earning just $2,490 from a handful of drive-in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic,[16] with a total of $31,646 in its seven-week run up to that point.
The site's critical consensus reads, "Swallow's unconventional approach to exploring domestic ennui is elevated by a well-told story and Haley Bennett's powerful leading performance.
[19] Justine Smith of RogerEbert.com gave Swallow 3.5 out of 4 stars, and described the film "an uncompromising horror that evokes deeply rooted alienation and dysmorphia" and "a far cry from the 'rah-rah' feminist empowerment stories that end in blood-soaked revenge."
"[20] Writing for The New York Times, Kristen Yoonsoo Kim praises Haley Bennett's exceptional acting, but finds Swallow's body-horror elements nauseating and the payoff and psychology behind Hunter's actions not illuminating enough.
She acknowledges the film's avoidance of pure body-horror sensationalism and its attempt to trace Hunter's need for control to a trauma in her past, but ultimately finds it lacking in its execution, concluding that it falls short in adding anything new to the woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown genre.
Myers compares the film's style and themes to Todd Haynes' works and the melodramas of Douglas Sirk, with its saturated colors, Midcentury furniture, and a story of a woman trying to escape her life.
She notes that the film is difficult to watch at times, but that it is "psychologically rich and always feels genuine" despite its stunningly stylized portrayal of the complex protagonist's inner world.