The housewife Hunter Conrad (Haley Bennett) is happily married with the young CEO husband Richie Conrad (Austin Stowell). However her life is totally controlled by her husband and his family. When she is pregnant, she is stressed and eats the weirdest objects. Soon Richie's family hires a male nurse and a psychologist to take care of Hunter. When they decide to send her to a psychiatric hospital, Hunter learns that she needs to control of her life.

"Swallow" is an interesting film about a pregnant wife with Pica disorder. The gorgeous Haley Bennett has excellent performance and the conclusion is magnificent. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Swallow"

Like another reviewer I imagined this was going to be about Pill addiction - a glimpse at the poster, the only thing I allowed myself or rather couldn't avoid seeing - other than that I did not read anything about the movie. So that looked like a pill thing ... and it turned out this is a different beast.

Now I imagine that most people who want to watch it (and of course those who already have) read up on the plot and are not like me avoiding any information at all costs. So you don't need me to tell you anything about that. What I will tell you, is that the movie is quite the tough and harrowing watch. And all the focus lies on the main female character. Everyone else is quite flat from a character standpoint. A bodyguard sort of type may have the most personality of them all.

But that did not make the movie any less intriguing. And while it seems impossible to have any sort of final resolution here ... you may agree with how the movie decides to end ... even if most likely you may not be able to really get a grip on everything she goes through, we do feel for her ...

Greetings again from the darkness. Have you ever picked up a marble and wanted to ingest it? How about a push-pin? A battery? Any other items normally considered inedible? If not, you likely don't suffer from the psychological disorder known as pica - an eating disorder at the center of the feature film debut from Carlo Mirabella-Davis. While pica may be new and confounding to most of us, the real story is what drives someone to swallow items that could be harmful and cause severe pain?

Haley Bennett (THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN) stars as Hunter Conrad, a newly married trophy wife to spoiled and handsome Richie Conrad (Austin Stowell). Richie is so entitled that his even more entitled dad (David Rasche) makes a big deal out of promoting his son to partner by proclaiming at a dinner party that "he earned it." Oh and this is after the parents bought the newlyweds a stunning home with a view. It's obvious Hunter 'married up' from a socioeconomic perspective, but her GQ husband pays more attention to his cell phone than he does to his wife or the picture perfect dinners she prepares. Hunter's Mother-in-Law (Elizabeth Marvel) offers up awkward support and passive-aggressive compliments ... such as a self-help book entitled "A Talent for Joy."

The book is a gift to Hunter immediately after Richie tells his parents "We're pregnant!" A passage in the book mentions to 'push yourself to experience new things'. It's at this point where Hunter sees herself become even more of an accessory within the family. One morning she spots a decorative marble and pops it in her mouth. She seems to take pleasure in this, and ... um ... after it passes, displays it as some type of trophy. Soon other items join the marble on display, until finally, Hunter is in so much pain, she's rushed to the hospital for surgery.

Pica is a disorder that's difficult to understand. Haley seems to be complacent, having no real persona other than her pretty face and pristine wardrobe. Swallowing the items evidently delivers the feeling lacking in her life - a life where her job seems to be becoming the perfect wife, mother, and daughter-in-law. Worried about the safety of the unborn baby, the family hires Luay (Laith Nakli),a Syrian live-in nurse, to keep an eye on Hunter. Oddly enough, the war-toughened Luay shows more compassion to Hunter than anyone in the family.

The film shifts gears a bit when we start learning more of Hunter's backstory during her trips to the psychiatrist (Zabryna Guevara). This backstory is of course tragic and explains a great deal about Hunter's strange compulsion. It also leads to a sequence with Denis O'Hare, who is a welcome presence in most any movie. The two share a scene that allows Hunter to fill in the gaps of her life.

Director Mirabella-Davis doesn't treat the rich as caricatures, but rather symbolic of the self-centeredness that seems to go with wealth. We see good in places we don't expect it. We lack the trust in places we should be able to depend on. Additionally, we question whether finding one's true self through genetics makes any real sense when compared with just making up one's mind about the kind of person they want to be. This is a disturbing, trippy, darker-than-expected film with an interesting score from composer Nathan Halpern. When it veers from the skirts of horror and suspense towards political and social topics, the film loses steam and tries to cram in a bit too much. Still, it's an unusual and creative film with a terrific performance from Ms. Bennett, and leaves us looking forward to the next Mirabella-Davis project.