‘Swallow’ Review/ Haley Bennett Is Extraordinary

Haley Bennett
Swallow

‘Swallow’ Review: Haley Bennett Is Extraordinary in Thriller About a Housewife with a Dangerous Habit

Haley Bennett delivers an arresting lead performance in a feminist thriller about a woman who can't stop putting things down her throat.

David Ehrlich

April 28, 2019

“Swallow”

Tribeca Film Festival

Editor’s note: This review was originally published for the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival premiere of “Swallow.” The film is now available early on VOD.

There’s something fitting about the fact that Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ “Swallow” — a provocative and frequently brilliant thriller about the patriarchal control over female bodies — is set in a purgatorial stretch of upstate New York that’s roughly equidistant from both Jeanne Dielman’s home at 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels, and the arid San Fernando Valley that almost suffocates Carol White to death in “Safe.” While he might not possess Chantal Akerman’s visionary patience, or exhibit Todd Haynes’ singular talent for mining horror from metaphor, Mirabella-Davis has crafted a sharp and surprising modern fable around a woman whose environment has been weaponized against her since birth.

Haley Bennett

Haley Bennett
Photography by Diego Uchitel

HALEY BENNETT

Though press has angled her as a “girl on the rise” for years, Haley Bennett has proven herself as the screen siren she set out to become.

Interview by Dustin Mansyur

It takes a special kind of girl from the Midwest to brave the shark-infested waters of Hollywood and emerge, not only unscathed, but also with one’s truest character still intact. In a world quick to tell you everything that you are not, Haley Bennett unapologetically beats her own drum to a tune that she is: grounded, earnest, and refreshingly honest. Her ability to play upon her vulnerabilities both on and off screen is what makes her most enticing. Having an “affinity for characters who have experienced loss” isn’t necessarily the kind of target P.R. strategy that most would choose for the path to becoming A-list. But then Bennett isn’t most.

‘The Magnificent Seven’ Star Haley Bennett / How She Crashed The Boys’ Club

Haley Bennett
The Magnificent Seven

‘The Magnificent Seven’ Star Haley Bennett: How She Crashed The Boys’ Club (And Stole The Movie) — Girl Talk

As the female lead in Antoine Fuqua's Western remake, the rising star embraces danger and a true independent spirit.

Kate Erbland
September 22, 2016

 

“The Magnificent Seven”

Haley Bennett is all smiles. The female lead of Antoine Fuqua’s upcoming “The Magnificent Seven” remake is equally bubbly when talking about her nerve-jangling audition process, the physically demanding shoot and what she’s got on the docket in the coming months (“I’m going to need a vacation from the vacation!”), but even all that sunshine can’t obscure that Bennett is a serious actress who is only further growing into her career with grace. Bennett first popped up on the big screen in Marc Lawrence’s 2007 rom-com “Music and Lyrics” — yes, that was her playing the spacey but sweet pop star who saves Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore’s songwriting career — and has spent the next decade carefully choosing roles across a wide berth of genres and budgets.