The Swallow emerges first as a prime example of Exactly What It Says On The Tin Horror. The plot is straightforward; the monster’s right there on the poster, and everything about the film’s presence suggests a wild creature feature survival adventure. Introducing the film at Fantastic Fest, where it was the closing movie, writers/directors Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer (the minds behind films like the excellent Starry Eyes) cited Roger Corman as an influence in its approach.
Indeed, The Swallow is at its best when it’s the most like a Corman film, or the ’80s remake of The Blob, or a segment in Creepshow 2, when it leans hard into the garishness of its ideas and has fun with them. Unfortunately, those moments are wrapped up in a script that’s somehow simultaneously too slow and too brief, a cast working with only the barest hints of character, and a film so tonally confused that I still can’t tell if anyone involved was intending parts of it to be funny. Like its central monster, it’s a muddy mess, but that doesn’t mean it’s uninteresting.
Like I said, we’ve got a really direct plot at work here: Young friends Ziggy (Grace Van Dien), Katie (Tayler Buck), Vince (Kalama Epstein), Rich (Jack Wright), and Kim (Kayla DiVenere) set out from their lives in the city to drive into the woods for a camping trip at one of Rich’s favorite childhood outdoor spots. After hiking a mile into the lush forest and setting up camp, they soon discover that they’re surrounded by pools of steaming mud with a pull like quicksand on steroids and an apparent sentience that makes it even more dangerous. As her friends become snared in the muck, Ziggy sets out to search for answers, while the other survivors fight for their lives.
Basic (not a bad thing), uncut survival horror stuff, right? There’s a monster; it kills you in interesting ways, and you have to try to survive while it eats your friends. We’ve all seen this movie, and we’re still not tired of it, as anyone who’s loved movies like Slither or Infested in recent years can tell you. There’s always something new to do with this basic premise, as long as you’ve got a few things on your side.
Let’s start with the good stuff. As lame as “sentient mud” might sound on paper to some of you, the creature at the heart of the Swallow really is its most interesting character. Comparisons to “The Raft” from Creepshow 2 are already floating around, and they’re not entirely off base. This story isn’t as good at building tension or genuine empathy in the way “The Raft” is, and that story benefits from brevity, but we’re talking about the same kind of ineffable muck monster. At its best, this creature is clever, even witty, and when it starts to go to work on human bodies, it makes for some striking, gloriously gnarly practical effects.
There are at least two gore shots in this one that I’ll be thinking about for quite a while.
Sadly, the monster really is the most interesting sentient thing in the movie. The young cast, who genuinely give it everything they’ve got and wrench some real feeling out of moments of peak terror, are saddled with a script that reveals little interiority, or even basic dynamics between the characters beyond a series of archetypes. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, wooden dialogue and all (at one point a character no older than maybe 22 says “scurry on your butt,” I kid you not, three times in a row), but what’s mystifying is how much the film seems to want to try to be something at least a little more complex.
There are hints of bigger ideas at work in the story, both on a micro and macro level, that either never pay off or simply linger in the background in an effort to offer some vague connection to something like an environmentalist message. Just one, non-spoilery example: Early in the film, it’s established that Ziggy’s real name is “Chelsea,” and she hates being called that, so when another character makes a point of calling her that, it hints at antagonism. Is there tension in this friend group? Are Vince and Ziggy insecure about their relationship in light of Rich and Katie’s? These things are sort of gently lobbed at the screen for a few moments, then disappear like smoke, evaporating any real potential empathetic link along with them. It leaves the film feeling unfocused at best and unfinished at worst.
This lack of focus – which is sometimes literal, as the focus in many of the forest scenes appears alarmingly soft – colors the rest of the film a muddy brown. It’s too serious to be intentionally funny, too reserved to be camp, and yet too campy to be grounded. Apart from the central monster, which really does hold the film together with its surprisingly effective set of talents, The Swallow feels less like a movie and more like an excuse to make a mud monster. The film feels cobbled together around one cool idea, and when that one cool idea’s really all to hold onto, the rest of the film sinks.
The Swallow made its world premiere at Fantastic Fest. Release info TBA.
