★★★

As an analogy for how the difficult things we suppress and stuff deep down inside can eventually hatch and consume us from the inside, Carter Smith’s suspense/horror film Swallowed offers a novel concept. Two best friends, Dom (Jose Colon) and Benjamin (Cooper Koch), find themselves caught up in a scheme on their last night together before Benjamin moves to Los Angeles to begin a career in gay porn.

The scheme is orchestrated by Dom, in the hopes of sending Benjamin off with as much money as possible for the start of a new life. Only problem is…Dom has put both he and his best friend in the middle of a drug running situation far more sinister and frightening than anyone could have imagined.

And that’s only the beginning. When Dom visits his cousin to get the drop, he stumbles upon Alice (Jena Malone). His cousin is strung out and Alice is packing a gun and small dumpling size baggies that need to be swallowed to complete the transfer. Held at gunpoint, Dom swallows down all but one of the baggies, with Benjamin forced to swallow one himself. With the directions given to physically pass the baggies without damaging them and then to follow very specific directions, Dom assures Benjamin this will all be okay.

The less said here the better.

Smith’s film is called a “body horror” film and certainly elements of the film fit that description. However, this is ultimately more of a suspense film, bound by an escalating intensity of scenes and situations that test the mettle of even the most patient of viewers. Through the spectacle of the story, we see the tendrils of Smith’s bigger vision. And though the central thesis speaks to queer identity and masking who one truly is inside, Smith’s film takes a unique turn and creates a space where being queer can be threatened not by those who hate gay and queer people, but also through queer objectification and predatory behaviors.

This is amplified late in the film with the arrival of Alice’s boss (a deranged Mark Patton), as the story shifts from something of a road-trip saga to one set in the proverbial “cabin in the woods.”

Smith builds an unsettling and unnerving situation for the first half, and then shifts his film into a different kind of shock and awe that doesn’t always pay the dividends he is likely expecting. That Swallowed feels like two different films is more a misstep with the screenplay, as opposed to the heavy lifting being performed through Eric Nagy’s swift and well-paced sequencing. Nagy, whose editing makes the film impossible to turn away from, seems unable to find the right strings to tie together the two distinctive acts playing out before us.

With that said, you simply cannot avert your eyes from cringing at some of the wild surprises Smith puts on screen. And Swallowed will get people talking. Some will find the larger themes at play as profound and meaningful. Some will focus on the insane situations which occur in that cabin and find their jaws unhinged from the skull.

In the end, solid, gripping performances from Koch and Malone make Swallowed a film discerning and open-minded audiences will want to seek out. For others, your mileage may indeed vary.

Swallowed was screened as part of the Fifth Annual North Bend Film Festival.