Eleven months ago, we shared the news that director Carter Smith and actress Jena Malone were teaming up again, thirteen years after they worked together on Smith’s feature directorial debut The Ruins (watch it HERE), on a new horror film called Swallowed – a project Smith has described as a “slimy wild queer horror nightmare of a movie”. Now Swallowed is set to have its world premiere at the Overlook Film Festival tomorrow, June 4th, and a trailer has arrived online to give an idea of what Smith has in store for us with this one. Check it out in the embed above!
Swallowed has the following synopsis:
After a drug run goes bad – two childhood friends must survive a horrific night in a backwoods hell of drugs, bugs, and obscene intimacy in this queer horror nightmare.
Malone is joined in the cast by Mark Patton (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge), Cooper Koch (Power Book II: Ghost), Roe Pacheco (Bloody Pi), and newcomers Michael Shawn Curtis and Jose Colon. Colon was Smith’s muse when it came to the writing of Swallowed. Smith had taken pictures of him for his website AlltheDeadBoys.com, and while he was looking at the pictures a character named Dom came to mind. Dom is the character Jose plays in Swallowed.
This was a micro-budget production shot in Smith’s home state of Maine, with a crew of 8 and a filming schedule of 16 days. Smith told The Hollywood Reporter,
Swallowed is the movie I wish I’d had as a horror loving queer kid growing up in rural Maine – with all the blood, sweat and tears of a classic midnight movie.”
An image of Malone’s character in Swallowed can be seen below… but it’s very dark, so it can’t be seen very well. I’m a fan of The Ruins and enjoyed Midnight Kiss, Smith’s contribution to the Into the Dark anthology series, so I look forward to seeing how this film has turned out. (I haven’t seen Smith’s other movie, Jamie Marks Is Dead, yet.)
How does Swallowed look to you, and are you a fan of The Ruins? Let us know by leaving a comment below.