‘The Swallow’ Review – A Gruesome Blob Movie That Sinks [Fantastic Fest]

Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s Starry Eyes tore me apart when it was released in 2014. The film announced the pair as filmmakers who preferred to look under the veil at the darkest parts of ourselves. That trend has continued with their work: grim, nihilistic horror pictures that eviscerate the viewer. Their latest, The Swallow, aims for the same, but with much less impact thanks to a shallow script as empty as the mud-blob monster it centers on.

Five teens led by Ziggy (Grace Van Dien) trek through the wilderness to a waterfall spot Rich (Jack Wright) remembers as magical. When they get there, they find a fence meant to keep trespassers out, but that’s not going to stop them from drinking and partying it up. Soon, though, the friends discover a muddy people-eater in the form of a sentient blob. Now, they must find a way out of the forest before it swallows them all whole.

If a mud-blob sounds dumb to you, well, your expectations for The Swallow are set, because it’s about as dumb as teen horror gets.

That all starts with a paper-thin group of characters. To the filmmakers’ credit, they do attempt to give these people a tiny bit of depth. Ziggy seems disillusioned with her boyfriend, Fitz (Kalama Epstein). Fitz, meanwhile, has a thing for Rich’s girlfriend, Katie (Tayler Buck). Katie’s stepsister, Kim (Kayla DiVenere), has a thing for Rich and also hates Ziggy for some reason. And Rich? Well, Jack’s just your typical beer-chugging dude bro. Look, I didn’t say they had that much depth.

Crushes and love triangles tease conflict to come, but none of it ever comes into play in any meaningful way. These characters have almost zero personality to engage with, and the filmmakers hardly have an interest in exploring any of them beyond surface-level tropes. Even worse, they’re all pretty damn dumb. One scene has a guy get stuck in the mud blob, realize the keys to their vehicle are in his pocket, and reach in to get them. When that hand gets stuck, he tries the other. No, really. This is the horror genre. You expect teen characters to make some big mistakes. But this is next-level stupid.