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Swallowed is a scary motion picture by writer/director Carter Smith, who formerly directedThe Ruins The movie’s property issues Benjamin (Cooper Koch) and the male he has a crush on, Dom (Jose Colon), ending up being drug mules. Complications emerge when Alice (Jena Malone), Dom’s contact, requires them to swallow the drugs in a prophylactic. Circumstances result in the 2 being terrified by Alice’s sibling and drug lord Rich (Mark Patton), in a remote cabin.
Smith informed Fangoria that while searching for investors for the movie, their response was, “We love this script so much; it’s tender and it’s scary and it’s gross. But maybe bring it to us when you have a finished film. We can’t really invest right now.”
“Yeah, I’ve always been a genre fan and I’ve always been queer, and those two things always kind of ran parallel to each other and never intersected. I mean, there was that one moment in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 where they did, and there have been a couple of other places. But I just felt like if I was going to make a movie that’s mine, something that is one hundred percent from me—and of course, it’s also for audiences and other people—but I’m gonna tell the story with the sort of characters I’m interested in exploring, who are going through the kind of stuff that either I’ve gone through or people I know have gone through, and not having to ‘straight it up’ or tone things down.”
Speaking of Freddy’s Revenge, Patton was constantly Smith’s very first option for the function ofRich Seeing his efficiency as Jesse Walsh was the very first time Smith saw somebody he related to when he was young. Then, after seeing the documentary Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, Smith believed, “that guy belongs in a movie being closer to himself, who he is now.” So he composed Rich with Patton in mind and began messaging the star over Instagram.
Playing With Gender and Sexuality in Swallowed
Films have a long history of portraying bad guys who are either queer or greatly indicated to be so. Disney has actually ended up being rather notorious for queer coding its renowned bad guys. A practice that audiences have actually ended up being more important of recently. One of the important things that Smith talked about with Fangoria about Rich, a gay bad guy, is having that kind of character end up being a “camp stereotype.”
“Well, I think some stereotypes are in place because there are things that are stereotypes because they’re true, you know? There’s truth in them. With Rich specifically, I wanted to make sure he wasn’t a black-and-white character. I mean, yes, it’s easy to hate him, but I also wanted him to have a humanity, where you can understand that he hasn’t had things easy, and he maybe grew up in a different time and has gone through shit. Not to excuse anything he does in the film, but morally, it’s kind of a grey area when you’re dealing with some of the choices he makes and the things he instigates. And also, Rich is such a self-posturing guy. For him, everything he does is a performance. In a way, he’s used to being this backwoods flamboyant badass, and a big part of his life is performative. He’s kind of putting something on—a character he’s created to survive where he does.”
Another character composed with their star in mind for the function wasAlice Malone and Smith had actually formerly interacted in The Ruins, which was Smith’s directorial launching, and had actually spoken about doing something once again at some point. Swallowed was shot at a cabin owned by Smith’s moms and dads, which Malone had actually formerly checked out, so he stated, “You want to come back to Maine? I’ll cook some really good food for us, and we’ll make a little movie. We might not have all the trappings, but it’ll be fun!” That appeared to have actually worked.
“Well, I wasn’t actually thinking about [how in a typical movie, you’d expect Alice to be portrayed by a man] specifically. I was just thinking about the idea that she’s the toughest, most badass character. Because to me, yes, that probably is a man, but Alice is the most intimidating person in the film. She makes me nervous, she makes me uncomfortable, and I think that’s interesting; in a movie with a lot of testosterone, it was great to have that element mixed in.”
Swallowed is presently readily available on VOD and digital platforms.
