I can't stop thinking about Swallowed (2022) dir. Carter Smith. I can't say if it's a bad film, but it's definitely not as good as it could be, yet I find myself running over it in my mind again and again like a skin bump I feel compelled to scratch. It is a beautiful and convoluted softcore film. A realistic and depressing, almost sublime piece of work - at times.
In fact, it was camp in many regards as the collision between poor writing and excellent cinematography produce an uncontrolled slingshot of emotion.
I was drawn to the film by the premise and beautiful stills. I love horror movies and a body horror and thriller is something that is definitely up my alley. Unfortunately, it never escalates to a truly frightening degree and there are many "misses" in terms or writing and scenes where the intended efffect never comes together, while still showing off great technical skill and artistry.
There's nothing quite special about the first act - the bubbly anticipation of the last night in town with a best friend is a scene played out many times before. Finding out that the main character Ben (Cooper Koch) is going off to Los Angeles to become a porn star is an interesting wrinkle, but it's not what the film attempts to be about. It is, however, very contemporary and feels true to life in showing the friendship between Ben and Dom (Jose Colon) and the openness between them, as well as the supportive relationship and worry that Dom shows for Ben.
The problems in the writing begin with the introduction of Alice (Jena Malone), who Dom had been in contact with for a small job to earn some cash for a send-off gift for Ben to help get him on his feet in the new city. While the premise of being a drug mule is not problematic on its own, the dynamics and dialogue feel forced when Alice's failure to control the situation begins when Dom runs to his cousin when she isn't there to meet him.
For someone who we later finds out has done this before, her management of the situation is quite sloppy, and she coerces the duo to swallow the drugs at first by pretending that someone else will come take the job and then changing her mind and pulling out a gun to force them to do it anyways. Alice as character doesn't feel well defined, and appears to change personality based on what the plot needs, while still being plainly snarky and always on the edge of losing control of the situation, which is a strange characterization for someone who has apparently done this many times before. Here, another flaw of the script appears as lines that are redundant are often repeated, without much change in intonation, giving a feeling of deja vu that pervades throughout the film. The purpose of which seems to be that the package is valuable and delicate, which could have been conveyed via acting. A few more script edits and changing her characterization to be quiet and menacing could have produced a better effect that it was seeking.
The trip across the border is uneventful, and the scene with the border patrol could have been significantly cut down as we seem to have seen the whole interaction and there was no need to swallow the substance at all as the cursory chat was less than thorough, although there is some delightful characterization between the two leads. It's possible that a later plot point could have justified the need to swallow the substance but it is never verified so it should probably have been cut in the edit.
The problems in the script continue with the bathroom scene, where a Canadian redneck mistakes them for queers and punches Dom in the stomach. While I understand the plot necessity of the scene, the escalation feels forced and the dialogue again feels poorly constructed as they seem to reiterate that they hate each other before the attack, almost belaboring the point. It is also at this point that the drug they were carrying turns out to be a living organism, as out comes the tadpole looking creature comes out of Dom's anus and is in his disrobed pants in a visual that is not dissimilar to a bloodless miscarriage.
All of these plot choices and critiques of the first half of the film would have made it an interesting and memorable film to watch, if at times awkward due to the characterization and writing. However, in the second half, the tension - well, it doesn't ratchet up - stumblingly crescendos into almost a different genre and messier metaphor of a film.
There is another stilted conversation about what the characters are actually carrying inside them as they go up to meet Alice's boss as it turns out to be creatures of some kind. Alice rushes Ben to extract the rest of the worms from inside his friend with the help of some Vaseline, and the whole procedure is surprisingly sterile. For a film about body horror, the extraction where Ben is essentially fisting his straight best friend to remove the remainder of the creatures, there is no blood or other viscera as he extracts them. As someone who has fisted before, I'm not sure it would be as bloodless for someone who has never stretched that sphincter before, and it seemed like a missed opportunity to make it more visceral.
This new detail that the supposed drugs are actually living creatures puts a new wrinkle into the film. While a drug bursting in the gut would have been terrible on it's own, the fact that they are actually living creatures means that these men are essentially carriers, or rather, mothers, to this living being.
The anxiety of carrying something living within you - something parasitic and could bring harm to you even, but still nonetheless relies on you to live - is a common sentiment among mothers. Without a familial bond, the horror of the situation is much more apparent as this time bomb is being harbored by the two men. In fact, the history that one of Dom's bag had burst and one of the larvae had died, but not before biting him is almost a retaliation from the creature, or rather, a miscarriage metaphor that leaves him in a state of delirium. The additional information that the other bugs are later confirmed by Rich to be worthless after coming out of Dom is almost a commentary of how bad at being a mother his character is, as they children that come out of him are 'damaged and unusable.'
Speaking of, Alice's boss Rich (Mark Patton) soon returns to his cabin, and the film moves away from the alien threat of an unknown creature being harbored inside their body to a very human threat - the threat of a person with more power than you and the threat of sexual predation. What an iconic scream queen though, it is always a pleassant surprise to see Mark Patton in this film.
Rich is callous and nonchalant as he watches Ben finish retrieving the last of the larvae from his friend, confirming that the bugs are useless in this state after retrieving his gun from Alice and forcing her to leave. Dom, suffering through the ordeal, falls unconscious after a tender kiss from Ben as Alice returns to confront Rich, after which a gunshot rings out and Rich returns to the remote cabin to be alone with Ben.
The discomfort of the situation only grows as Rich asks Ben to forgive him and tell him that he isn't a bad person, and the emotional predation is palpable. While Rich says he would never assault Ben because that happened to him long ago, there is still the heavy tension of coercion as he never lets go of his gun and forces Ben to fully undress nude as he prepares a bath for him, something that rings very true as even predators and people who violate boundaries rarely acknowledge the coercion or power that they hold, much less can even face the damage they've caused.
I am troubled though, by having a flamboyant and effeminate gay man behaving in this way in a queer film nonetheless falls into the trope of the creepy and predatory homosexual. There are many ways to portray homosexuality, and while there is nothing wrong with portraying some gay men as effeminate, the fact that Rich's predation is tied to his flamboyant expression is unfortunate.
If Rich was a masculine or even neutral gay man, the film would have been equally powerful in commenting on the nature of predation and coercion through his behavior as being expressions of power. However, being the only flamboyant and feminine character marks him more as "the other" and outside the norms than everyone else, and he is also the only character which is specifically coercive in a sexual manner, linking the two.
Ben is also gay and dresses in a more androgynous fashion, yet he still has a very masculine or neutral presentation and expression otherwise. As the protagonist, the audience relates to him and it would have been refreshing to relate to someone unconventional and feeling the complex power dynamics of being predated on by someone more "conventional."
It's just a reminder that femmephobia is still prevalent even now. Was it really necessary to have the only flamboyant character be so insidiously evil? Do we not have enough "Sissy Villains" or "Creepy Crossdressers" in media as per TV Tropes? In the end, with everyone else out of the picture, the film leaves us with two gay male characters and the dichotomy of "good gays vs bad gays," with gender expression and propensity for cruelty being the defining character traits of the two characters.
Returning to the film, Ben, as part of his revenge, does not use force but cunning and drugs, which is a predominantly female method of killing. His larvae survives and is "birthed" healthily, and it is through that larvae that he drugs Rich and disposes of him, portraying him as a good mother with a viable birth.
The holiness of Ben is further confirmed with the last image before the credits of Ben washing Dom's body in a nearby river, and cradling his body as if he were the Holy Mary cradling the sacrificial Jesus in the Pieta.
The credits scene plays out with Ben becoming the porn star he wanted to become after moving. While he is physically naked and "exposed," he hides his eyes, which I thought was interesting.
It's harder to relate to people who have physical barriers, including accessories like large bags or masks. It's part of why road rage is so common - you feel as though you are not interfacing with "people" who you can see, but these autonomous machines that are just "in your way."
Despite the lack of visible appearance of a barrier without clothing, there is an emotional barrier. It's hard to know what his character is feeling with glasses. What a strange ending to the film, it feels out of left field, despite being foreshadowed in the beginning. The film is a golf swing, and this ending is finding out the golf ball actually has a motor inside, and drove into the hole, not really needing to be hit in the first place.