davidehrlich’s review published on Letterboxd:
There’s something fitting about the fact that Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ “Swallow” — a provocative and frequently brilliant thriller about the patriarchal control over female bodies — is set in a purgatorial stretch of upstate New York that’s roughly equidistant from both Jeanne Dielman’s home at 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels, and the arid San Fernando Valley that almost suffocates Carol White to death in “Safe.” While he might not possess Chantal Akerman’s visionary patience, or exhibit Todd Haynes’ singular talent for mining horror from metaphor, Mirabella-Davis has crafted a sharp and surprising modern fable around a woman whose environment has been weaponized against her since birth.
The submissive but subtly demented housewife of a standard-issue Patrick Bateman wannabe (Austin Stowell), Hunter spends her days trapped in the gilded cage of a glass home they share along the Hudson River. Portrayed by an extraordinary Haley Bennett — whose forced smile of a lead performance feels like a crack growing along the side of an antique vase — Hunter is as blank and beautiful as a fairy tale princess, and seems happy enough to spend her days plucking leaves out of the pool, playing mindless games on her iPhone, and preparing dinner in an emerald green dress that too perfectly matches the drapes. She doesn’t appear to have friends or a car; you get the sense that she’d get lost if she left her driveway, anyway.
But after learning that she’s pregnant, and coming to grips with the fact that her body is literally no longer her own, Mirabella-Davis’ heroine finds an unusual means to restore a measure of her personal agency: Swallowing the small items she finds around the house and placing them back once they come out the other side. First it’s a marble. Later, a thumbtack. After that, a battery (it seems Pica escalates rather fast). Perhaps it’s some kind of purification ritual. If Hunter’s body isn’t permitted to through the world, then at least she can shards of the world through her body.