In the “lurid” realm, Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" is another reference point for "The Swerve," where Catherine Deneuve's submissive character deteriorates rapidly when left alone in the apartment over a long weekend.
The physical environment around Holly also shows signs of deterioration, such as the image above depicting when she checks her teacher’s mailbox at school and the nearby wall is split— reminiscent of Repulsion and the psychological cracks in the apartment of Catherine Deneuve’s protagonist.
The borders between her reality and her nightmares start to become distressingly fuzzy, but The Swerve isn’t really the story of an unreliable protagonist who is (maybe) losing her mind, in the vein of Repulsion (1965), Perfect Blue (1997), or Black Swan (2010).
Like the classic Roman Polanski film “Repulsion” (1965), the horror is strictly psychological.
The bar has been raised so high after harrowing experiences of seeing something like Polanski’s Repulsion or Bergman’s Persona .