If you don’t like body horror, I don’t suggest Swallowed. Because it is the embodiment (pun intended) of making your audience uncomfortable in their own skin. And Swallowed does just that. Reminiscent of things like Tracy Letts’ Bug, the story was all about two friends who watch their lives break in front of their eyes when Dom (Jose Colon) does a drug run to get his friend Benjamin (Cooper Koch) money for his move.
The problem is that these drugs are not what they seem and what they’ve swallowed could take everything they know away from them. This is definitely one of those movies that isn’t for the faint of heart and is going to take a lot to unpack but it’s worth it for fans of the genre and body horror as a whole. Which is exactly why director Carter Smith wanted to make it in the first place.
I spoke with Smith for the release of Swallowed and about the film as a whole but I wanted to know about his own inspiration for the film. And it wasn’t surprising that he admitted that he was fascinated by body horror himself.
“The story started with this idea that that what they were swallowing is not what they thought,” Smith said. “So it was sort of inherent in the story from the beginning that there was gonna be that reveal. And that once that reveal happens that it sort of takes off in this other direction. When it comes to horror and sort of thriller type stories, I’ve always been a fan of body horror and it horrifies me when we sort of realize that we don’t have control over our bodies. We don’t have control over our health to a certain extent, aging. There’s all of this stuff that like, once we lose control, it’s truly terrifying. And to watch these characters do something of their own free will and then lose that control is like all the more tragic.”
You can see our full interview here:
Watch Swallowed, if you dare.
(Featured image: Momentum Pictures)
