It’s easy to confuse Hunter Conrad (Haley Bennett), the woman at the center of “Swallow,” with a mid-20th century housewife: she worships her husband while wearing pearls and cocktail dresses and has a bounce Jackie Kennedy at his bob. The only deviation is to play iPhone games to relieve boredom.
Viewers will eagerly await the appearance of the “happy” wife in this feature film by screenwriter-director Carlo Mirabella-Davis. When Hunter is not isolated in his isolated house, she is surrounded by suffocating stereotypes: the rich husband (aptly named Richie) who does not really listen; the carefree stepfather and the stepmother whose generosity carries nuances bristling with accusations that Hunter is a gold digger. (There are also horror visuals of the slaughter of animals.)
Hunter learns that she is pregnant. Bennett is exceptional, with a mysterious and glazed expression that seems impenetrable; she shows her husband a Stepford smile, disguising his real reaction. Pregnancy triggers pica, a constraint to consume non-food products. She first swallows a ball, then degenerates into more dangerous objects – a pushpin, a chess piece, a battery – all potentially fatal to her and the baby.
Mirabella-Davis, whose crew was largely made up of women, eschews pure sensationalism of bodily horror by tracing Hunter’s need for control of trauma in her past. But given how nauseating it is to see Hunter performing increasingly dangerous acts of self-harm in his prison house, neither the gain nor the psychology behind his actions make “Swallow” a sufficiently enlightening addition. to the woman on the verge kind of nervous breakdown.
Swallow
Classified R for the consumption of sharp objects. Duration: 1 hour 34 minutes.
