“Swallow,” currently in limited release from IFC Films, marks a confident narrative feature debut by filmmaker Carlo Mirabella-Davis. Thirty-nine and a lover of the medium since he begged his parents to let him rent a horror movie for his sixth birthday, he is particularly drawn to “dangerous and strange” films. (His parents chose “The Blob;” it gave him nightmares.) That love for the subversive shines through in “Swallow,” a deliberate and dark thriller that follows Hunter (Haley Bennett) from pristine homemaker to woman on the verge as she develops pica and starts compulsively swallowing household objects.

Continue reading ‘Swallow’ Director Carlo Mirabella-Davis Talks Body Horror And Telling A Story Of Female Trauma As A Male Director [Interview] at The Playlist.

Haley Bennett’s been long overdue for acting accolades. Consistently arresting in smaller roles – like her turn in “The Girl on the Train” – she just needed to find a leading role meaty enough to showcase her range. Then, in 2018, it appeared: Bennett signed on to play Hunter, a disaffected housewife who eats inanimate objects in Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s debut film, “Swallow.”

READ MORE: ‘Swallow’: Haley Bennett Astonishes In Housewife Body Horror Drama [Tribeca Review]

In the film, which opens in limited release March 6, Bennett gives a pitch-perfect performance, shifting effortlessly between humor and gravity.

Continue reading In ‘Swallow,’ Haley Bennett Is Not An Object—She’s Devouring Them [Interview] at The Playlist.

It’s easy to believe that trapped housewives belong to a bygone era, with revelatory literary works like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) and Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” (1963) taking on the kind of mythological esteem reserved for horrors long past. A century or two later, it seems we’ve evolved beyond such hidebound sexism. But “Swallow,” the revelatory first feature from Carlo Mirabella-Davis is here to tell us, in no uncertain terms, that the past isn’t quite as past as we might like to think.

Continue reading ‘Swallow’: Haley Bennett Astonishes In Housewife Body Horror Drama [Tribeca Review] at The Playlist.