吞下 Swallowed(2022)
简介：
- Follows two best friends on their final night together, with nightmare of drugs, bugs and horrific intimacy.
演员：
影评：
本片最恐怖的地方只能是海报了，正片里没有很明显的血腥场景、惊悚音效、心理或身体恐怖，它更像是借助一个可怕概念讲述了一个文艺爱情故事，并在故事诠释中完美展示了酷儿男主角的sexual charm。
本杰明（右）与多姆（左）酷儿是中性的人，影片的四位主要角色都具备了这样的中性特征。男一本杰明是出柜的porn star，举手投足柔情似水、媚骨天成；男二多姆留着长发，与本杰明有超越朋友的亲密举动；反派里奇衣着花哨、声调尖细、举止婀娜、自恋多情且对本杰明有露骨的兴趣。女反派爱丽丝相对三位男角色而言，处于强势与主动的地位，她举枪威胁男主们就范、开车运送受伤的他们、逼迫命令他们取出虫卵、在最后与里奇上司对峙以保护男主，爱丽丝同时彰显了女性的刚强果断与母性的慈爱怜悯，在男性角色为主的该片中，这一角色塑造得十分出彩。
强势的爱丽丝
妖娆的里奇但该片的绝对主角无疑是本杰明，所有的角色和剧情都在为展现本杰明的美而服务（当然多姆的美也有展现，并且展现角度也有差异）——美首先体现在性的张力上。Eroticism只有置于暴力、死亡的情境中才能得到极致体现。在影片中，本杰明和多姆从被爱丽丝对枪威胁时就开始处于弱势地位，随着多姆被袭击、虫囊破裂、本杰明和多姆被押送到里奇家中取虫、多姆和爱丽丝死亡，直到本杰明开始反杀前，本杰明和多姆的脆弱感、无助感一直在累加，而正是这种不断叠加的男性脆弱感，使得他们的erotism极大增强。汗水、挣扎、褪衣、洗浴，当这些行为包含了恐惧、紧张、痛苦时，超越性行为的sexual arousal就能上升至更强烈的内心刺激。
吞下未知物后恐惧的本杰明
取虫过程中痉挛的多姆
垂死的多姆
孤立无援下开始酝酿反击美其次体现在人格上。本杰明开局就身处弱势，但他一直在找机会反杀，在惊险逃出毒巢后又折返彻底击杀里奇，历经此番生死波折后光鲜亮丽地出席颁奖典礼，仿佛一切从未发生。本杰明是一个温柔、敏感、善良的男孩，也是一个坚定、勇敢、富有责任心的战士，他的目标如此明确，即使离开心爱的多姆也要远离偏远小镇，进入加州创造事业，他不羞愧于自己的职业，坦然于自己的性向，这样光明磊落的人格，在阴暗的恐怖片氛围中显得异常美丽动人。
与里奇对峙的本杰明美最后体现在情感上。这是一个悲伤的爱情故事，本杰明因为担心多姆而半主动地卷入这场交易，因不舍而冒死折返运出多姆，为他净身作最后的道别，因真挚的深爱而最后改名为本杰·多姆，与多姆融为一体，代替他活下去。双方只有在多姆濒死前的本杰明对他的蜻蜓轻吻，本杰明对多姆的爱被更细腻地展现在他对多姆在所有危急情况下的不离不弃、对他隐忍的担忧，他们不在肉体上交融，而在精神上实现合一（但影片更多展示的是本杰明对多姆的爱，多姆的情感诠释不足）。
最后的死别Cooper的表演细腻自然，在无妆的情况下他依旧完美展现出了雕塑般的肉体美与丰富的情感变化。虽然剧本创作地十分有创意，但Cooper灵巧优美的表演让人物更加立体饱满、更具有故事感，他赋予了恐怖片中的本杰明以天真诚挚但又成熟理智的特质，给人以信赖感与安心感，让我一直感到：他一定可以做成任何事，即使在恐怖片里，他才是绝对王者。
重生的本杰·多姆
伪装通关中
伪装结束（精妙的变脸）
Cooper Koch, born in 1996
Masculine bonds are under a particularly psychosexual scrutiny in American queer filmmaker Carter Smith’s third and fourth feature, SWALLOWED and THE PASSENGER, both delimit its storyline within a taut 24-hour span.
SWALLOWED starts with two 20-something friends Benjamin (Koch) and Dom (Colon) in a small Maine town, sharing their last night out before the former heads out to L.A. to pursue a career in the pornographic profession. Thinking of earning some quick bucks as a parting gift to Benjamin, Dom accepts a nightly drug run to Canada. Under duress from the surly contract Alice (Malone), they are coerced to swallow five condoms containing an unknown substance (Dom 4, Benjamin 1) and subsequently cross the border without rousing any suspicion (a part which crucially negates the necessity of swallowing the drugs in the first place, they can simply hide them in the car), but the problem is the excretion. An unexpected punch in the stomach causes Dom to experience excruciating pain and other strange symptoms. When Alice brings them to a cabin in the woods, things only get more violent and vicious when her boss Rich (Patton, the incongruous combination of brutish appearance and swishy mannerism) manifests himself.
Shot on a shoestring with camera barely venturing out of medium shots, SWALLOWED puts intimacy in the forefront. Right out of the box during the clubbing scenes, it is palpable that Benjamin has hots for Dom, who seems avoidant towards the hormonal closeness, whether because he claims to be straight or it is the moment of leaves-taking, he does want to cave in for his weakness. The rapport between a gay man and his straight friend whom he has a crush on is a knowing cliche but Smith doesn’t want to cheapen their feelings and especially after the story takes a wrong turn, it is the two men’s heartfelt affection that becomes a mental support for Benjamin’s ensuing bold actions.
Another delicate and deliciously unfolded masculine interconnection is between Benjamin and Rich, an old queer who smacks his lips all over the former’s Adonis physique (full-front nudity is a must). The gamesmanship between a predator and his prey, and how the table is eventually turned. SWALLOWED is awash with such racy innuendos, like Dom’s prolonged erection as a side effect of the leaking drug (a close-up of Benjamin swallowing his saliva is a nifty tease), or Benjamin’s fist work to extract the condoms from Dom’s anus (thankfully, the film’s coprophiliac predilection doesn’t really aim for verisimilitude), all play up to salve the thirst of the film’s demographic. Koch makes a good introduction as a new queer leading man, but Malone’s Alice getting fridged unceremoniously is a letdown. She is tough-as-nail, her maternal solicitude only gets exuded gradually, and should be given more agency to operate.
THE PASSENGER transports audience to a rural Louisiana, Randy Bradley (Berchtold) is a self-effacing, unambitious 21-year-old fast food worker. One morning, his coworker Benson (Gallner) snaps up after Randy is bullied by another coworker Chris (Laureano), he murders everyone in the premises (body count 3) except Randy. After cleaning up the place and dumping the bodies in the freezer, they drive away, Randy becomes his hostage in the passenger seat. However, what follows is not exactly a killing spree, but a seemingly altruistic gesture from Benson to help Randy figure out why he is such a doormat.
So it is an odd-pair situation where one of them is a psychopathic killer, but surprisingly, Benson really goes out of his way to orchestrate a life-changing lesson for Randy without dissembling his menace and trigger-happy spontaneity: driving him around to meet Randy’s ex-girlfriend Lucy (Leon), to learn why he is dumped and later paying a visit to Ms. Beard (Weil), Randy’s second-grade teacher who is injured in a bloody accident which precipitates him to assume the pushover defense mechanism towards the society at large.
Without emplacing too many turn-ups for the books, THE PASSENGER earnestly invests its time and attention in carving out Randy’s new-found confidence in dissuading Benson from doing something irrational and violent. There are moments when it seems they can be quite a perfect fit because each is beneficent to the other, and maybe, a new lease on life can be granted even to a mortal sinner like Benson. Such fancy is punctured when a facile, workaday suicide-by-cop solution transpires in the end, and we still have no inkling what makes Benson such an enormity. As if people like him do not deserve salvation after all the effort the film endeavors to convince us he is not the impersonation of pure evil. Compared to Randy, Benson is the one who is more hurt for a savior, it is a pity Randy and the film fall by the wayside.
Be that as it may, the two leads are both in fine forms, Gallner is alternately a hog-wild, gun-toting monster and a persuasive, no-nonsense mentor capable of indoctrinate some self-esteem into a pipsqueak, who is rather superbly incarnated by an earnest, smoldering Berchtold, who has that uncanny gravitas and resolute to pull off Randy’s spiritual transmutation from an apathetic nonentity into the salt-of-the-earth type.
So if SWALLOWED is a guilty-pleasure delight with its conspiratorial parody of transgression and subcultural defiance, THE PASSENGER demonstrates Smith’s more open-armed stance of touching the tenderest part of humanity, and establishes him as a filmmaker to be reckoned with.
referential entries: Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s SWALLOW (2019, 6.9/10); Sebastián Silva’s ROTTING IN THE SUN (2023, 7.4/10).
Title: Swallowed
Year: 2022
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Thriller
Director/Screenwriter: Carter Smith
Music: Christopher Bear
Cinematography: Alexander W. Lewis
Editor: Eric Nagy
Cast:
Cooper Koch
Jose Colon
Jena Malone
Mark Patton
Roe Pacheco
Thee Suburbia
Rating: 6.3/10
Title: The Passenger
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Thriller
Director: Carter Smith
Screenwriter: Jack Stanley
Music: Christopher Bear
Cinematography: Lyn Moncrief
Editor: Eric Nagy
Cast:
Kyle Gallner
Johnny Berchtold
Liza Weil
Matthew Laureano
Jordan Sherley
Kanesha Washington
Lupe Leon
Billy Slaughter
Rating: 6.8/10