Horror Actressing: Haley Bennett in "Swallow"
Friday, March 6, 2020 at 4:00PM by Jason Adams
Modern living breeds its own special brand of anxieties. It's a warm culture for bacteria. Walk around any big city these recent weeks and you'll see -- the face masks and the empty shelves where hand sanitizers once sat. We're internet ghosts, part people part machine, searching for apocalyptic keywords and wiping our screens down to curves where our fingers just fit. We're both exposed and isolated -- personal sized soap bubbles floating down every street; don't get too close lest you pop.
The ways this schism situates itself into our daily living, the way it expresses itself, varies-- personally I start to pluck hairs out of my beard if I stay still for too long. I know only too well the satisfactory sense of build and release, a manic arc unto itself, that such compulsions afford. There is a beginning and an end and then a beginning and an end -- a rollercoaster we control; a narrative of our making, our choosing, in days that feel anything but.
In Swallow, out in theaters and on VOD today, Hunter (Haley Bennett) doesn't feel in control of her life, and so she does something about it...
