Swallowed review
Swallowed mines its creepy, uncomfortable horror/thriller elements exquisitely before gorging itself on a ridiculously campy second act that squanders every morsel of its goodwill.
For their last night together Dom (Jose Colon) takes his best friend Benjamin (Cooper Koch, They/Them) out to their local dive bar. Benjamin is heading off to Los Angeles to become a gay porn star.
To make sure his BFF is in good hands, Dom decides to play drug mule to send Benjamin off with enough money to have a comfortable start with his new career.
Director/writer Carter Smith (Sucker) isn’t subtle about suggesting the mutual, unspoken interest between the two. Koch and Colon
Dom heads to meet up with his cousin, only to find her connect, Alice (Jena Malone, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) impatient to get the deal going.
Dom’s Spidey Sense is off as Alice is clearly shady and hyper aggressive. It’s hardly the most layered role for Malone, who spends most of the film yelling and spewing an abundance of homophobic jabs.
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Alice forces Dom and Benjamin to ingest little baggies that contain something far more exotic than cocaine.
When things go awry at a rest stop, Benjamin has to frantically scramble to keep Dom alive. This is where Swallowed is at its best as Dom starts to deal with extreme stomach discomfort, body convulsions and extreme sweating as a panicked Benjamin has no clue how to help.
There’s also that underlying sense of dread for Benjamin that this could be his fate soon as well.
Alice isn’t intended to be a likable character, but she’s softened somewhat by an even worse character — her sassy boss, Rich (Mark Patton, A Nightmare on Elm’s Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge).
Patton’s performance is a seismic shift steering the film from freaky body horror to a cartoonishly over the top thriller parody. Patton single handily ruins all the tension Smith established to this point.
It’s such a baffling choice to have Patton play his character so obnoxious that it just fully details the film.
Smith seeks to make Swallowed an erotic thriller. He keeps the camera lingering over Koch’s body seemingly just for the sake of maximizing as much full frontal male nudity as he can cram in. Not to worry, Smith works in plenty of backside shots as well.
Koch is the film’s most reliable and steady performer. He seems by far the most in tune with his character’s journey and how to properly convey the various emotions of this ordeal. His performance almost feels wasted by the time the film hits its final act.
While the film has a reasonable 92 minute run time, it still felt too long.
Smith’s methodical, leering pace is too slow particularly in the second half with the focus on Benjamin and the tone-altering Rich.
Swallowed worked so much more effectively with the focus on the creepy unwanted foreign elements causing bodily harm before the shift to the clownish drug dealer in the woods.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Photo Credit: KWPR