Swarm [2023]
Amazon’s 2023 series Swarm, created by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, is a perfect example of why filmmakers like David Lynch famously get away with creating absolutely bonkers nonsense. Lynch is famous for his insane pacing, otherworldly happenings, and intensely creative vision. What makes his works function and remain memorable as time passes is his intense confidence and authenticity. Swarm seems to be missing that key piece of the pie.
I’ll be totally upfront about this: I didn’t finish the show. I got through ep3 of 7 and decided I’d seen enough. So, if there’s a marvelous revelation that occurs or fixes my issues, making me wait until the halfway point of the show was far too long.
In Swarm we follow, Dre, as her obsession with Ni'Jah, a pop singer, turns her from a regular fan to an extreme para-social [para-socialite?]. As a member/ moderator of the Swarm [Ni’Jah’s fanbase] twitter, Dre is as obsessed as they come, and that obsession takes some dangerous turns.
If this premise sounds familiar, it’s because anime-film Perfect Blue already nailed the formula in 1997 and Darren Aronofsky put an inward spin on it in 2010 with Black Swan. I highly recommend watching either [or both] of those before committing the time to this. Of course plots don’t have to be wholly original and, especially in 2023, virtually nothing is. However, the plot itself isn’t the issue with Swarm, it’s the execution.
Just under 2-hours into the show, I’m not sure if it's a psychological thriller, a satire, a comedy, or a horror. The tone is strange and inconsistent, plot points seem disjointed if not entirely disconnected from one another, and our main character, Dre, seems to live in a world entirely devoid of consequences. It’s a world that tries to thrive off of the aforementioned Lynchian dream-logic, but lacks the thematic coherency, intrigue, or pacing to do so. Most aptly put, Swarm feels like a series of shorts edited together as an attempt at making a singular narrative. That brings me to my next point… technical aspects.
Swarm's technical aspects are capital G great! Hard cuts, clever transitions, great lighting and cinematography, and a killer soundtrack make the show a visual treat if an entirely nightmarish experience overall. It’s shocking to me that a show so well constructed can be so poorly written and realized. I would watch another something by this same technical crew in a heartbeat [the lead cinematographer, in fact, does one of my favorite horror films It Comes at Night]. It’s difficult to stress how well put together the show is on these different technical levels and how that almost makes the strange anti-pacing of the plot stand out even more. From simple clever things like putting the title of the episode at the end to the way its visual language is confident/ competent enough to shoot its predominantly black cast in very dark environments, Swarm is a great show to have on in the background of a party; where its only purpose is to be seen as you pass through a room.
Another positive about the show is Dominique Fishback’s performance as Dre. She is weird, frightening, and entirely believable as what can only be described as “not from this reality”. Her performance carries the show in such a large way that I hope she’s recognized come awards season. I can’t wait to see her in more roles with scripts that tell better stories, because this one is simply all buzz and no honey.
