Outstanding performance by the lead actress and sobering insight into severe mental illness, but, ultimately, I watch a movie to be entertained. This movie is not at all entertaining.

A strong performance from the lead keeps this afloat and carries it to a lightly twisted ending despite a slow pace and vague plot throughout.

Mental health is a serious issue and this movies touches on the aspects of depression, isolation, feeling unseen, and being unstable. I wish they took it further, as the movie started off somewhat slow. The ending was fairly decent, up until the last scene.

This was the most dismal movie I've ever seen. It leaves you with the most uncomfortable feeling....

Extremely well acted and produced, but it's nothing but pain, fear, and death. That's all. There's nothing redeeming; it's 100% darkness. I cannot bring myself to give a positive review of something like this, ever.

The Swerve is a thoroughly unpleasant movie. It's well directed and acted, with a strong performance by Azura Skye. It's not entertaining. Rather, it's depressing and disturbing. That doesn't mean it's bad. If your criteria for a film is hyper-realism, it succeeds greatly. But if you're in the mood for mindless, light entertainment, forget this one. The Swerve is solidly in the Diary of a Mad Housewife tradition. The theme of a woman losing her mind has been explored by John Cassavetes and Woody Allen. In fact, Skye's Holly somewhat reminded me of Gena Rowlands in Allen's 1980's Another Woman. Holly is a suburban high school English teacher with two surly, spoiled teenage sons and an unsympathetic husband who manages a grocery store. She almost anorexically thin, neurotically hung up on killing a mouse in her home, and upset about a childhood experience that her weird sister keeps bringing up. She gobbles anti-depressants. To add to the misery, her husband has been fooling around with one of his employees. One of her male students is attracted to her, and she has a shocking, inappropriate moment in her minivan with him. Not a good idea. It just fuels his obsession with her, and she doesn't try to stop it. Watching her descend into madness is not a lot of fun. Some critics consider The Swerve to be about mental illness rather than female depression stemming from external forces. I think it's a bit of both. I wonder if women will respond to The Swerve differently than men. Probably. As a clueless male with a limited understanding of women's emotions and the way that those emotions overwhelm their lives, I felt squirmy and edgy throughout this film. I recognized Skye's talent and appreciated her committed performance, but overall, I was terribly uncomfortable. Of course, art doesn't have to be edifying and uplifting in order to be valid. It can be bleak, humorless, hopeless, and despairing. But as for me, if I'm feeling dark, I'd prefer to look at Munch's "The Scream" than to sit through 90 minutes of unabated misery. The final act of this film turned my stomach. It also made me lose my appetite for apple pie.

The spiraling disintegration of a mother begotten. Expectations were subverted.

Hard to watch, hard to stop watching. Holly disintegrates before our eyes, yet what makes this movie so powerful is how mundane her life is. A life, as the saying goes, of quiet desperation. That's the horror of depression. It need not look violent. It need not look justifiable from an outsider's point of view. But it exists and if left alone can multiply and destroy. At the end I just felt profoundly sad. And, full of admiration for such a masterful portrayal.

A beautifully scored, acted, shot, and edited predictable and unsatisfying story. Characters are flat and underdeveloped. Plot holes abound.

Must watch movie if you like slow burn psychological thinkers 9/10

‘The Swerve' Tells an All-Too-Real Story About One Person's Descent Into Madness

This movie is very well written, top-notch acting, brutal emotionally and hard to watch, but you just can't take your eyes off the screen.

There are two swerves in 'The Swerve', but you'd have to be not watching to see the second one coming. There's a lot of good here for a film mostly spinning its wheels. Dean Kapsalis shows he's got an idea for his feature debut. He's got a pair of shorts to his credit and this would have been better served sliced down. Azura Skye is marvelous. She's worth the watch. Somebody give her something juicy. While her character is mostly one note she's tremendous. Why do people run AT a gun? Why is there nobody at the supermarket like ever. I get it extras cost money, but holy moly I want to shop there. This needs to be a lot tighter and crisp. We have a some fantastic acting here, but again it tells the same story a couple times before we get to the obvious conclusion. Final Score: 5/10

É bom, mas tem de tomar cuidado, com os gatilhos de sofrimento.

Dark and well-acted, but ultimately the film falls short of anything close to insight or catharsis -- let alone entertainment.

Pretty astonishing that this is a debut feature. Tense and gripping, with amazingly assured direction and a stellar lead performance.

I rented this because of the reviews. Bad mistake as this movie is trash. Slow, and a couple of peaks doesn't make a movie. Don't waste your time.

A very dark psychological/drama/character study of mental illness that involves a small town school teacher who becomes completely undone. The direction, writing and music are top notch. And the lead actress is incredible. You're with her the entire time and the last 20 minutes left me breathless. The whole film is brilliant. Very disturbing and incredibly done.

THE SWERVE is easily one of the best films I've seen in the last three years. I had heard some of the hype, but wasn't expecting it to be as stunning as it is. Is it a horror film? Yes. And I daresay scarier than a lot of other movies that share the genre. The difference for me is how deeply felt it is, how surgically precise in finding so much horror in the daily existence of the central character. It's a horror story in the way MACBETH is, and that's not a stretch (Shakespeare references are in the production design and in the most terrifying pie I've seen since TITUS ANDRONICUS). Most of the credit belongs to director and writer Dean Kapsalis, of course, but he couldn't have pulled this off without Azura Skye's Oscar-worthy performance (and the rest of the amazing supporting cast and crew). I can't wait to see what he does next!

Azura Skye is hauntingly devastating as a mother pushed to her ultimate brink of guilt, sorrow and depression to literally fall from the face of the earth by everyone around her. Probably one of the scariest movies you will get to see this year !