Swallowed (2022)

If you are willing to eschew the body horror expectations that the poster promises and don’t think too hard about the plot, there is enough to enjoy. If you’re a big Cronenberg fan and are looking for a gory, body horror fix, then this isn’t the film for you.

Swallowed (2022)
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Written and directed by Carter Smith

Follows two best friends on their final night together, with a nightmare of drugs, bugs, and horrific intimacy. (IMDB)

A Horror Movie Review by Mark  Walker 

****This review contains some mild spoilers****

If you are still in two minds about whether or not to accept that drug dealer’s offer to smuggle his product across the border, maybe pop Swallowed on before you make your decision… it might just help make up your mind…

Benjamin (Cooper Koch) just got his big break. He’s moving to LA to star in gay porn movies and is out drinking and dancing with his friend Dom (Jose Colon) for what may be the last time before he moves away. Dom is going to miss Benjamin. There is an air of, as yet, unrealised love between the two of them, and Dom is keen to do something nice for his friend before he leaves.

While most people would arrange a collection at work, or perhaps get some IKEA vouchers to help furnish a new flat, Dom arranges for them to smuggle what they believe are hard drugs across the border into Canada. Dom wants to send Benjamin to LA with enough cash to set himself up well and nothing says, ‘I love you,’ more than an illegal get rich quick scheme!

It’s a lucrative job, but I think I would still go for the vouchers.

When they meet with dealer Alice (Jena Malone) and she forces them to swallow several packages at gun point, even Dom begins to think this might have been a mistake.

At the rendezvous point for the drop off, an altercation leads to one of the bags in Dom bursting and he reacts, badly, to the contents, which don’t quite turn out to be the expected Columbian snorting powder. Dom and Benjamin have been tricked into smuggling hallucinogenic worms across the border. Worms that, if processed correctly, can provide an amazing high but, if they bite you, can be fatal.
Having one loose in your intestines is going to be a little worrying.


Rescued by Alice, they are taken to her boss’ remote cabin where they try to save Dom’s life, retrieve the packages and avoid the amorous advances of dealer Rich (Mark Patton).

What started out as a fun night in the club, turns into a nightmare of body horror, fear, threat and worms.

Or at least it should have been.

The poster for Swallowed is unpleasant. It shows Benjamin as submissive, crying, likely being forced to swallow something he doesn’t want to. Thoughts of ALIEN are invoked by the lump in his throat. It’s a classic trope of body horror, having something alive inside you, and that concept should strike terror into the hearts of your viewers. The poster tells us we should expect gore, ickiness and stomach-churning body horror. David Cronenberg would be proud of a poster like that.


Sadly, Swallowed didn’t quite reach those heady heights for me. While the premise is good and the idea of swallowing living bugs is unpleasant, the film never quite capitalises on that promise of nauseating body horror.

Swallowed starts well and doesn’t waste any time getting into the story. Just a few minutes in and we are sat with Dom and Benjamin in their car as Alice pushes them into swallowing what they believe are the drugs. We are then on the road, getting into a fight and then racing to save Dom’s life. However, around the 1-hour mark, when Rich shows up, the film slows down dramatically. While there is an attempt to develop growing tension between the two men as Benjamin tries to figure out how to escape from this nutter and Rich plans to protect his investment, it ultimately ends up as twenty or so minutes of very little happening, and the intended tension just wasn’t there for me. There is a final flurry at the end and a suitably karmic resolution, but the film fell a little flat by the time the credits rolled.

Which was a shame as there is a lot to like in Swallowed. The two leads are great, and Koch puts in a good turn as Benjamin changes from the meek, crying drug mule, to a hard ass saving his own skin. Colon has less to do in the film overall, but still gives a good performance. Malone does bitchy drug dealer well, coming across hard as nails, but with a vulnerability beneath; there is always someone above you in the pecking order! And Patton is gloriously over the top and camp, but with an underlying menace of unpredictability and ruthlessness. Director Smith does a great job with his actors and the film is shot well. The overall quality belies, what I assume, would have been a lower-than-average budget.


In the end though, I just felt that the film didn’t quite deliver on its premise and there are logic and plot issues that don’t quite make sense.

The whole smuggling operation seems a bit off and even a bit elaborate for what they were doing. There was very little resistance at the border and the whole act of swallowing seemed to be for no purpose. The two friends were told the bugs had to be kept at a certain temperature, so maybe the stomach was the right place for them to be but, when they got them out, they were told to put them in a temperature controlled container; so why swallow them in the first place?

While the idea of a scene involving Benjamin retrieving the remaining packages from Dom’s arse using a rubber glove and lube is perfect body horror fodder, it just didn’t make any logical sense. I am no doctor, but I am pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to pull packages in that way just a couple of hours after swallowing them. And, for body horror, it wasn’t nearly as horrifying as it should be.

In some ways it felt too well embedded in the real world to allow the right amount of suspension of disbelief for the plot and story to work overall. Ultimately, this damaged the film a little for me.


With a poster that brays ‘body horror’ the film was sadly lacking in the gore and wince inducing visuals you would expect from such material. The growing bugs in their balloons are disturbing to look at, but you would expect more gore and unpleasantness once you get into the realms of retrieving them.

If you go in with this knowledge and lower expectations around the body horror side of things, you do get a solid enough gay horror exploring the dangers of drugs and what you put in your body. Just don’t think too hard about the plot and logic and you’ll be fine.


Swallowed is a well-directed and acted gay horror that didn’t quite deliver on the premise for me. If you are willing to eschew the body horror expectations that the poster promises and don’t think too hard about the plot, there is enough to enjoy. If you’re a big Cronenberg fan and are looking for a gory, body horror fix, then this isn’t the film for you.

Swallowed currently scores 5.5 on IMDB and I wouldn’t go any higher than that, but that is still a decent score for horror. There are some very low scores, but I figure those are from people that were shocked to see penises in a gay horror, bless ‘em.

Swallowed is available digitally on 24th April from Blue Finch Films and is worth a watch.

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