“Swallowed” Movie Review

 

“Swallowed”

Movie Review

 

'Swallowed,' written and directed by Carter Smith, stars Jena Malone, Cooper Koch, Mark Patton, Jose Colon, and Roe Pacheco. The Ruins was director Smith's first film, and it featured graphic violence that made many in the audience squirm. Now he's back with Swallowed, a film that will make viewers squirm for a completely different reason.

Benjamin (Cooper Koch) and Dom (Jose Colon) have been friends their entire lives, but everything changes with time. Ben is about to leave their small town for Los Angeles and a career in gay pornography. Worried about his friend's future in such an insecure line of work, Dom arranges a quick drug run to provide him with some cash to fall back on. Unfortunately, things go wrong almost immediately.

Their contact, Alice (Jena Malone), informs them that the packages must be transported internally. Then, after an encounter with a homophobic redneck played by Michael Shawn Curtis, one of Ben's packages bursts, triggering a horrific chain of events.

Swallowed proved to be far more character-driven than I had anticipated based on the plot and director. It turns out that the packages they ate contained bugs whose bite causes a variety of drug-like side effects. Unfortunately, either by design or by budget, both those effects, as well as the less pleasant aspects of retrieving the packages, are mostly depicted through the actors' facial expressions and the sound department's work. What we see in Dan Martin's work is straightforward but effective.

The script's body horror elements actually become less important as the film progresses, especially after Alice's boss, played by Mark Patton, arrives on the scene and leeringly announces he may have to personally deliver Ben's packages. This is no less disturbing than the events of the first act, but it's also a different kind of disturbing because by the time Swallowed's final act arrives, Ben is forced to rise to the occasion and deal with a villain who is as dangerous as a homicidal drug trafficker.

The issue is that, despite the fact that all of the elements are handled well enough, the shifts in tone and theme do not always go smoothly. The shift from a David Cronenberg-inspired story about sexual parasites to a much more realistic and gruesome tale about sexual predators, manipulation, and murder is abrupt. Even more so if you were expecting a horror movie.

The crime story in the film's second half contains some of the film's strongest and most uncomfortable moments, but I was disappointed by how little of a role the bugs played in the plot. Swallowed could have been written with the duo transporting more mundane pharmaceuticals with a little more effort. The bugs appear to have been tacked on for added ick factor.

Despite that major letdown, Swallowed has a lot going for it. The four leads, particularly Patton and Koch, deliver excellent performances. It's a showcase for Koch, who gets to show two completely different sides of Ben. On the one hand, he brings to life his and Dom's long-standing, if somewhat complicated, friendship, and on the other, he engages in a battle of wits with Patton in the final act. Those scenes serve as a fitting conclusion to an unpredictable and tense narrative. Swallowed isn't the film it was hyped to be, nor is it the film it could have been, but it's an effective thriller and definitely something different.

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