A housewife finds control through a strange habit in 'Swallow'

[SWALLOW opens Friday, March 13th at the Atlas Diamond Centre Cinemas 16.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Depicted as the stereotypical upper-class housewife, it would seem as though Hunter (Haley Bennett) has everything she could want from life. She lives in a nice house, has a good looking and seemingly considerate husband in the person of Richie (Austin Stowell), and wants for nothing material.

But in Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s SWALLOW, what some would consider the American dream is far from it. Hunter’s day to day life offers little opportunity for fulfillment beyond decorating her home. And it turns out her seemingly perfect husband is kind of a douche. He’s not physically abusive, but he has little if any interest in his wife’s thoughts and opinions.

The only other people in Hunter’s life are her in-laws, who at best see her as an extension of their son and not as a real person. Richie’s dad (David Rasche) barely acknowledges Hunter’s existence. Richie’s mother (Elizabeth Marvel), on the other hand, makes passive aggressive comments and suggestions to her daughter-in-law. Hunter’s own parents are notable by their absence, and if she has any friends, we don’t see them.

31 Days of Halloween 2018: 'Hold The Dark' Keeps Things Murky

[Once again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. I've done this the last few years on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded (usually with the help of a few other writers). Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can pull it off this year.]  

The Netflix original feature HOLD THE DARK has a lot going for it. It creates a great sense of place with its rural Alaska setting. That in turn contributes to a tone of cold, quiet desolation. The WICKER MAN-esque trappings of strange pagan wolf-based beliefs are suitably unnerving. Jeremy Saulnier’s grindhouse meets arthouse style is just as potent as it was in BLUE RUIN and GREEN ROOM. And the cast boasts such reliable solid players as Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgård, and Riley Keough. Unfortunately there are issues either inherent in the source novel by William Giraldi or in its adaptation for the screen by Macon Blair that make HOLD THE DARK a frustrating experience.

Wright plays wolf expert Russell Core. He’s been called in to kill a pack of wolves responsible for the deaths of 3 children by Medora (Keough), the mother of the most recent victim. As it turns out things aren’t entirely as they seem, though. Medora likes walking around wearing nothing but a wooden wolf mask and trying to get strange wolf experts to strangle her. It also turns out that she’s the one responsible for the death of her son, which Core discovers after she has gone on the lam.