That theme of female rebellion and reclamation makes Swallow an effective companion piece to Leigh Whannell’s recent horror hit, The Invisible Man, which Universal quickly released on VOD in the wake of movie theater closures due to the coronavirus. “Even though pica is a dangerous compulsion, it also serves as a kind of catalyst for Hunter to rebel against the system.” Her moments of defiance that are her ways of reclaiming herself.” When viewed through that lens, Mirabella-Davis feels that the film is less about body horror than it is about body autonomy. There’s this incredible demand on her to put on a role of what a wife should be. This is a film about someone who is reclaiming control over their body, and also rebelling against a very contained and controlled world that has these expectations of how she should behave. “The trophies are important to her because it’s a personal accomplishment. “She gave a thumbs-up to the accuracy of, but it’s something that’s specific to this character as an interesting metaphor,” he says. Hunter reaches new depths of despair in Swallow. Rachel Bryant-Waugh, as a consultant on the script. “The manifestations differ for each patient,” he says, adding that he enlisted clinical psychologist and pica expert, Dr. “I never saw that before.” At the same time, Mirabella-Davis cautions that Hunter’s trophy collecting isn’t necessarily a routine symptom of pica. That manner of retrieval made a big impression on Smith: “I was like ‘This movie’s f***ed up, man,’” he said on his podcast. Swallowing these objects are only part of Hunter’s ritual after they pass through her digestive systems, she rescues them from being flushed away and displays them as trophies on her bedroom vanity. “That’s a moment where everything builds to her gazing into the void,” Mirabella-Davis confirms. The director describes the thumbtack, for example, as a “dangerous liaison,” that functions as an appetizer of sorts for the harmful objects she starts to consume, culminating in that small, but sharp screwdriver that she swallows in a moment of horror for the audience, and a moment of desperation for her. It’s almost like a memory from her childhood, a moment of happiness lost.” Those psychological flavors escalate as Hunter falls further into the grip of pica. As Hunter holds it up to the light, you can hear the distant sounds of a beach scene - people laughing, gulls calling overhead. “The marble seemed like the perfect thing to start with, because there’s something nostalgic about it. “I wanted each of them to be like an emotional memory with its own psychological flavor,” he explains. Starting with small objects - a marble here and a thumbtack there - she gradually works her way up to consuming more dangerous items, including a battery and a mini-screwdriver.īehind the camera, Mirabella-Davis focused on the intricacies of giving each object its own taste. During the long, lonely days she spends in their picturesque suburban house perched above the Hudson River, Hunter finds herself so starved of connection that she begins to ingest pieces of her daily life. But her new family regards her with barely-veiled contempt, exacerbating personal demons stemming from a dark secret in her past. The film focuses on a young woman named Hunter Conrad (Haley Bennett), who leads a seemingly privileged life as the bride of a second-generation Wall Street tycoon (Austin Stowell). Since its VOD premiere on March 6, writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s narrative feature debut has been terrifying Twitter with its all-too-authentic depiction of pica, an eating disorder that compels individuals to consume non-nutritional objects - think keys, rings and dirt. While stuck inside during the already-unnerving coronavirus pandemic, quarantined movie fans are finding another source of tension courtesy of the buzzy psychological thriller, Swallow.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |