Some movies make the most of a simple idea, especially nightmare scenarios that are central to thriller and horror flicks. It was minimal as can be — A rock band witnesses something they shouldn’t have seen in a bar run by neo-Nazis and locks themselves inside the green room. It’s a neat little premise (much like Rope, Buried, and other claustrophobic thrillers preceding it), calling for just a handful of actors and low budget.
While Swallowed belongs to this category, its ‘camp’ is not far from being emphasized. This is because the horror-thriller has an ingenious plot – two best friends eat condoms filled with drugs and carry them over the border to Mexico which eventually goes wrong. Before he excretes out the drug completely he is punched in his stomach that makes the condom break open and let loose its content. Normally, this would mean certain death as heroin or whichever other drug-bathed condom floods your body; but in Swallowed these are not mere powders or rocks: they are alive.
The line alone is intriguing enough and it’s stretched to the maximum in Swallowed. However, this objective takes time to realize so instead it chooses to establish its central characters leisurely. In the film, two best friends are partying before one of them leaves their podunk border town to become a porn star in Los Angeles. This introduction starts off with Ben who displays sexy dancing moves accompanied with endless smiles on his face. With Cooper Koch playing Ben, charmingness has no end unlikeability or warmth itself.It only wants one good night out before leaving town.
For his part, Dom (an enigmatic Jose Colon) definitely loves him though it surpasses any normal notion of identity. Unlike Ben’s public gestures of affection though he admits better than all girlfriends even when ‘straight’. He also admires how Ben makes love as he cheerleaded for each other through girl talks about dreams in music. It is a platonic love relationship but not like any you ever heard off. To accrue cash for Ben’s trip on their last night together, Dom would have to do just that.
Dom has made a deal with the devil or at least with Jena Malone who plays Alice, a rude, acerbic drug dealer who is as unloveable as she is coldly competent and efficient. The Donnie Darko actress also seems excited about getting on with it so she pushes the boys into swallowing this drug-filled condoms after initial hesitation. They are supposed to meet her at a rest stop across the border; however, things go very bad there.
There is an archetype redneck character who walks into the public bathroom that Dom uses to try and vomit out the swallowed condoms (despite being stereotypical he embodies an unbridled homophobic aggression that many queer individuals dread). This escalates into a fight where Dom receives another punch on his stomach from him. As Alice later explains, these are not your ordinary drugs filled condoms but rather revolting little vermin living inside them whose stings make you feel high and horny (similar to licking Sonoran Desert toad).
Alice led Dom and Ben into a forest cabin because of the pricking on his inside, in an attempt to collect the rest of his condoms without breaking them. It is delicate and intense and absolutely awkward! In a famous French movie called “Les Diaboliques”, a group of men had to drive through the jungle with trucks full of nitroglycerin for big money (the slightest shock would see their fragile cargoes explode). Swallowed is just like “Les Diaboliques” if the nitroglycerin were condoms and the Amazon was in Dominique’s lower intestine. It could be The Wages of Queer, since it is cleverly observed about what that identity can cost you.
Yeah, Swallowed does not avoid dealing with fish out drug condoms from inside this guy’s anus; however, it makes such an act suspenseful and visceral rather than making some joke like Scary Movie would do. When Alice’s employer Mark Patton appears at her cottage demanding drugs things turn bad. This gun-waving psycho-fuck in faux-cowboy jacket, dirty hair with spikes, however, has both hilarious and scary aspects as hell when he plays an old queen who believes he is doing good.
Thus Swallowed is one helluva ride after its first twenty minutes that carefully establishes a warm friendship between buddies. To begin with, this opening scene almost treats these horrible incidents as if they are warning signs or tests for Ben that must somehow prepare him to deal with an LA life fraught with scariness and adult films where his hand will definitely be up someone else’s ass but never full of condom worms.
In many respects, Swallowed feels tied closely to young LGBTQ+ people whose fears are expressed by queer community members’ toughness borne out of unfairness. More so than meets directly suggests itself through the film proper, its final 30 minutes becomes an unusually unique psychological creepiness that ensues between Ben and the gay pusher man and carries with it more meaning for LGBTQ+ viewers than the film lets on.
Even if ending has some moments that require disbelief, this is one hell of a climax in the tradition of Tarantino’s long and taut two-person scenes from Inglorious Basterds to Pulp Fiction. But, what viewers have to go through in order to get there is very uncomfortable and includes greased hands, full-frontal nudity, scatological discomfort and disgusting drug-roaches. It can be intense; sometimes it is disgusting but bold, transgressive and queer in ways that only a few films ever come close to achieving.
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