# Swallowed (film)

Swallowed is a 2022 American independent body horror film written and directed by Carter Smith. The film stars Cooper Koch, Jose Colon, Jena Malone, and Mark Patton. It follows two friends who, on their final night out, end up smuggling a wrapped substance, via swallowing, that ends up going awry. The film premiered at the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival, and was released in the United States on February 14, 2023. It received mixed to positive reviews from critics, who praised its performances, tension, and exploration of queer themes, but criticized its pacing and tonal shifts.

## Plot

Two friends, Benjamin and Dom, are celebrating their last night together in a small Maine town before Ben flies to Los Angeles to become a gay porn star. Dom, who is secretly in love with Ben and wants to show how much he believes in him, drives them to pick up a special going-away gift. It turns out that Dom has agreed to do a drug run into Canada to make some money for Ben to help him set up his life in LA.
The contact, Alice, gives them the packages: five condoms containing an unknown substance. She says Dom must swallow them. When he refuses, she pulls a gun on him and makes him swallow four and Ben swallow the fifth. She tells Dom to text her once the packages are out of their systems.
Across the border, the boys pull over at a rest stop so that Dom can pass the packages through in the toilet, but he has trouble doing so. Randy, a homophobic redneck, enters and confronts Ben until Dom steps out to defend him. Randy punches Dom in the stomach and leaves, slashing their tires on his way out.
Dom initially seems all right, but quickly begins to experience stomach pains. Refusing to call the authorities, he excretes one of the packages, which has something moving inside it. Ben takes Dom back to the truck, but Dom starts to lose the feeling in his legs and begins to get an uncontrollable erection. Ben calls for an ambulance just as Alice, alerted by a text sent earlier by Dom, arrives and makes him hang up.
Alice takes the boys in her truck, and explains that the condoms contain larvae with venomous bites that get people high. She takes them to a woodland cabin owned by her boss, Rich, intending to collect the packages from their stools, but when Rich calls to say he is coming to the cabin, she panics and tells Ben to fish them out of Dom with his fingers.
Ben manages to get one package out before Rich – an older gay man – arrives. He is immediately attracted to Ben, but reacts poorly when Dom demands the money. He puts his gun in Dom's mouth and tells Ben to get back to work. When Alice tries to talk him down, he tells her to leave.
Ben extracts all but one of the packages. Dom begins to scream in pain and convulse, and Rich retrieves the last condom from Dom – but it is broken and the bugs are still inside him. Dom, overdosing on the venom, falls unconscious.
Alice returns, feeling guilty after hearing Dom's cries, and an increasingly upset Rich refuses to let her take Dom to the hospital. Alice and Rich go outside to discuss matters. Dom regains consciousness and Ben kisses him, but Dom dies shortly afterwards. There is a gunshot and Rich returns, saying Alice pulled a knife on him.
Rich begins to cry, and tells Ben that he is not a bad person. He demands Ben agree. Ben does, robotically, and Rich immediately lightens up. Rich runs a bath, and tells Ben to take off his clothes and go in the bathroom. Ben retrieves a sharp pair of tweezers – the nearest thing to a weapon – and gets in the bath just as Rich enters, still armed.
Rich begins to wipe Ben down with a washcloth and makes small talk; Ben, biding his time, asks what it is like when the bugs bite. Rich says it is a full-body experience; "you can feel everything, you just can't move". Rich, trying to placate Ben and in the hopes of seducing him, offers him all the money Alice and Dom would have got: $15,000. Ben charms Rich into letting him put on his underpants, shoes and a jacket before stabbing him in the neck with the tweezers and fleeing.
Without the keys to the trucks, however, Ben is stranded. He escapes to a nearby waterfall, where the final condom leaves his system. Ben returns to the cabin, and watches Rich dump Alice's body down the outhouse toilet. Ben sneaks into the house and when Rich returns, he subdues Rich with a poker, grabs the gun and makes one of the larvae bite him.
Ben washes Dom's body in a river and cradles him quietly. Then he drags the now-paralyzed Rich to the outhouse and, ignoring the man's pleas, dumps him down it.
Over the credits, Ben is seen being interviewed on the red carpet at the fictional Squirty pornography awards, where he is up for best newcomer. He emotionally thanks "all the people who believed in me".

## Cast

* Cooper Koch as Benjamin
* Jose Colon as Dom
* Jena Malone as Alice
* Mark Patton as Rich
* Roe Pacheco as a Border Officer
* Michael Curtis as Randy Redneck
* Jonathan Spence as Thee Suburbia (themself)
* Hannah Berry as Dee

## Production

   ...For me to put it front and centre and to make a film that is 100% unabashedly from a queer point of view with queer characters, in a story that isn't necessarily about them being queer, is really meaningful.
Writer-director Carter Smith had wanted to make a low-budget film akin to a directorial debut, in contrast to his own feature debut The Ruins (2008). Upon writing, Smith had written the role of Rich for Mark Patton, while The Ruins collaborator and friend Jena Malone was the first choice he had in mind for Alice. Additionally, Jose Colon was cast after previously starring in a photoshoot series for Smith's gay-centric All the Dead Boys banner, while Cooper Koch was cast by Smith immediately upon viewing his audition tape.
It was filmed in Maine, where Smith had lived previously; the cabin used was built by his father.

## Release

Swallowed premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal on July 15, 2022. It also screened at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, and FrightFest on September 23–28 and October 28 that same year, respectively. In January 2023, Momentum Pictures purchased the North American distribution rights, and released the film on video-on-demand and other digital retailers on February 14, 2023.

## Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of 51 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Although its second half is difficult to digest, Swallowed is an admirably unusual – and overall effective – mixture of body horror and romance." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 53 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.