Editor’s Note: This article discusses the eating disorder/mental health condition of pica and mentions of rape and emotional abuse.
Society has a morbid fascination with watching people do strange and dangerous things; it’s why reality TV shows exist to begin with. AndCarlo Mirabella-Davis’Swallowuses that fascination to its advantage with its tale of a repressed housewife who develops the mental health disorder pica. It makes audiences unable to look away from the spectacle of the compulsive disorder while telling a powerful story of the fight for women’s autonomy.
SwallowstarsHaley Bennettas Hunter, the innocent but anxious new wife of Richie (Austin Stowell), a man from a wealthy and privileged background. Richie gives Hunter every material comfort money can buy, but her picture-perfect marriage – and pregnancy – comes with the price of her individual freedom. The emotional abuse Richie and his family inflict begins to manifest throughsymptoms of pica, the compulsion to eat inedible objects. The film uses Hunter’s disorder to illustrate how women are often robbed of control over their own bodies and the ways in which they take that control back.
Swallow is a psychological drama that delves into the life of Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife living a seemingly perfect life with her wealthy husband. Struggling with feelings of control and personal fulfillment, Hunter develops pica, a compulsion to swallow inedible objects. As her condition deteriorates, her alarming behavior escalates tensions within her family, unveiling deep-seated issues and revealing unsettling truths about her past.
Haley Bennett Struggles With Pica in ‘Swallow’
The unsettling nature of Hunter’s disorder starts slowly inSwallow; when she’s shut down by her in-laws and husband during a dinner party, she becomes fixated on eating the ice in her glass. Then, after a condescending visit from her mother-in-law,she intentionally swallows a marble.As her neglect continues and her new family tries to mold her intosomeone akin to a Stepford wife, Hunter’s cravings become more intense. Some of the unusual items Hunter swallows include a thumbtack, a metal button, and a ceramic figurine.
Hunter also collects what items she can after she passes them through her body and puts them on display. But this isn’t what led to the discovery of her disorder. Instead, an ultrasound reveals thatshe’s been swallowing even more dangerous items like batteriesand safety pins. The potential for perforating her internal organs or battery acid damaging her or her baby is truly horrific, not to mention the scene explicitly showing the items being surgically removed through an endoscopic procedure.
But the terrifying peak of Hunter’s pica comes after a panicked moment when she realizesher husband has been spying on her.Richie is bribing Hunter’s counselor to tell him about her forced therapy sessions.After this discovery, a frantic Hunter searches through the kitchen drawers for something to satisfy her craving – to give her control back.She finds a small screwdriver, the kind you would use to repair eyeglasses. The camera shows Hunter slowly sticking the screwdriver in her mouth, but cuts away from the actual struggle to get it down her throat, only showing her convulsing on the ground afterward. It’sa gruesome scene without being overly gory, which works in the film’s favor. It stops itself from straying too far into spectacle territory,keeping the message of the movie at the centerrather than voyeurism.
‘Swallow’s Lack of Gore Makes It More Terrifying
The lack of gore inSwallowallows its real purpose to shine, making it a movie that’semotionally powerful as well as haunting. Each instance of swallowing onscreen is tied to a moment ofHunter losing control of external forces. Her mother-in-law comments on Hunter’s appearance, implying that Hunter isn’t yet perfect enough for Richie. Richie himself finds any attempt by his young wife to express her own desires distasteful and shuts her down. And after her ultrasound, Hunter is forced to not only attend therapy, but also to endure beingput under constant guard by a family friend.
Every external aspect of Hunter’s life is out of her own control, and it affects her psychologically, which Haley Bennett portrays painfully well.Swallowoften puts Hunter either alone or in situations where she can’t verbally express herself fully. So, Bennett relies on subtle facial expressions and small physical movements to convey the anxiety, the listlessness, and the pain her character is feeling. And when she is able to speak her mind, Bennett still has command over our sympathies. In one scene,Hunter explicitly tells her therapist that swallowing household objects makes her feel in control, and Bennett’s performance makes it easy to believe it’s true. The script also makes it easy to see that Hunter’s point of view is both disordered and understandable.She is already traumatizedby past experiences in her life; she was conceived by rape, and it’s implied that her knowledge of this is in part the reason whyshe thinks she needs to mold herselfto the expectations of others.
You Won’t Be Able To Look Away From the Grim Body Horror of This Psychological Thriller
Body horror is more than just a tool in this picture-perfect film.
But her subconscious mind rebels against this idea, beginning with the pica and eventually driving her to escape from her “perfect” life. After finding out about the betrayal of her husband and therapist, andthe threat of her in-laws to forcibly commit her to a psychiatric hospitaluntil her baby is born, Hunter flees her home. Her trauma and mental health condition isn’t immediately wiped away, of course. The film shows her eating soil alone in a motel room, and when she calls to explain herself,Richie makes it clear how little he thinks of his wife. Richie tells Hunter that life with him is as good as it will get because she’s worthless; he turns from telling her that he misses her to threatening to hunt her down if she doesn’t come back to him. But even so,Hunter is on her way to closure, seeking out her biological father for answers. She also tells her husband that she rushed into parts of their relationship (including her pregnancy) to make him happy — not because she wanted those things — and refuses to return to him despite his threats.
‘Swallow’s Ending Gives Hunter Her Power Back
After seeing Hunter be compelled to swallow numerous dangerous and stomach-churning items,the end of the movie turns the horror on its headwith the last object she swallows. All the objects that came before only gave Hunter the illusion of control. Not only that, but some of them were actively harmful to her, even though to Hunter, it seemed secondary tothe harm which her husband was doing to her.
But, similar to the ending ofThe Invisible Manwith Elisabeth Moss,what’s been harming Hunter is instrumental to freeingher from her abusive relationship. That’s not to say the movie glamorizes disordered eating or other mental health conditions. The final items Hunter swallows on-screen are abortion pills that free her fromthe pregnancy and marriage she realizes were never what she wanted. This moment isn’t part of her compulsion, since she’s actively chosen to take this medication that has a specific purpose, and it’s the only act of swallowing that gives her tangible control over her body and her life in general.
Depicting mental health conditions on-screen is tricky and easy to get wrong, but specifically using pica instead of giving Hunter an unnamed, general feeling of anxiety makesSwallowfeel more genuine.It’s nota bloody female revenge tale, but it still packs a memorable punch with its subject matter.Swallowmanages to show both the horrors of a woman’s freedoms being taken away and the triumph of taking them back through a realistic, if unusual, lens.
