Swallowed incorporates digestive horrors like in Angus Sampson and Tony Mahony’s drug-running thriller The Mule or Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s Swallow - very uncomfortable, very recognizable gastro gross-outs. What Smith reminds us is our bodies can be subject to horrors far more ordinary, which are subjectable scenarios some even choose.
When movies like Carter Smith’s Swallowed tease “body horror,” first instincts often assume something Cronenbergian or mutated like Brian Yuzna’s Society.