The Swerve (2018)
Directed by Dean Kapsalis
The dark secrets of Holly's seemingly perfect life are exposed when an unwanted intruder spins her life out of control forever.
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4 films that influenced The Swerve
What critics say influenced The Swerve
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 .
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).
It’s more of a distaff version of Falling Down , one that fittingly flips the tone and style of Joel Schumacher’s dubious 1993 feature on its head.
Perhaps this is the working mother’s Falling Down .
It premiered at Chicago’s horror-leaning Cinepocalypse festival in June of last year, and it has elements in common with stifling psychological horror features such as Hour of the Wolf (1968), Dead Ringers (1988), and The Machinist (2004).