Arrow Video FrightFest 2022: "Swallowed"

Swallowed (2023) 

Filmmaker Carter Smith has always told queer-centric stories (with maybe one early exception) that just so happen to fall into the horror genre. After his queer horror short “Bugcrush,” he was just getting started in the genre with his feature debut, 2008’s screen adaptation “The Ruins,” an effectively squirm-inducing (and underrated) when-vines-attack gem which has still not lost its vicious power. “Jamie Marks Is Dead” was a quiet, melancholy mood piece about the longing of two young men, one alive and one dead, and Smith’s contribution to Blumhouse and Hulu’s horror anthology “Into the Dark” was the entertaining gay holiday-slasher “Midnight Kiss.” Now for homegrown indie “Swallowed,” Smith does not take the path of least resistance. 

Benjamin (Cooper Koch) and Dom (Jose Colon) are lifelong friends spending their final night out in their small Maine town at a dive bar. Benjamin plans to go off to Los Angeles, having been cast in a gay porn shoot. Dom wants to send his friend off with a nest egg with just one quick stop, which ends up changing both of their lives. It starts with Alice (Jena Malone), a tough-as-nails drug dealer. She has Dom’s drunk cousin passed out in her jeep and, before giving Dom instructions for a drug transport, Alice holds both men at gunpoint. In order to smuggle some hot new drug across the Canadian border, Dom needs to swallow baggies of this mysterious contraband---and Benjamin gets stuck swallowing one as well. Before the friends can even make the run, Dom begins experiencing painful side effects. And that’s where we’ll stop in describing this all-nighter. 

How “Swallowed” begins in no way signals where it will lead, and that’s part of its thrill. Grounding this off-the-rails story is the friendship between Benjamin and Dom, played with an emotional honesty by the beautiful Cooper Koch (just seen in “They/Them”) and newcomer Jose Colon. They are loyal to one another and clearly love each other, even if one of them possibly wants something more from the other. If “Swallowed” doesn’t initially seem like an intimate queer story—besides involving a gay man entering the gay porn industry—well…just you wait. It’s a gutsy one. Read the full review at Horror Obsessive.

"Swallowed" (94 min.) premiered at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival and will play at Arrow Video FrightFest on August 28, 2022. Momentum Pictures is distributing the film on VOD and digital on February 14, 2023.

Grade: B