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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
17
Mixed:
9
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Mar 15, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Fishback rarely plays into the laughs the character’s absurd psychosis generates. She’s a frightening, wounded core around which the show’s snarling satire of media madness swirls. Dre’s also a deceptively blank slate for both a condescending Black community and clueless white people to project their misunderstandings onto, often hilariously.
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Mar 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
A sharp, introspective style — relying on disturbing ambient sounds, changing color gradients and consistent shifts to Dre's first-person perspective — allows for the audience to have a way in. And Fishback's performance, mysterious and unsettling while also tapping into measures of deep pain and sadness, completes the picture.
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The Mercury NewsMar 15, 2023
ColliderMar 15, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Glover and Nabers have crafted a production that looks past the fan and shows the heavily-damaged person behind her, but without trying to make her likable or justifiable. I binged the season almost without break, and I'm sure a lot of others are going to do that too.
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IndieWireMar 15, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Seven episodes is maybe one more than we needed, and the finale runs out of steam. Episode 6, “Fallin Through the Cracks,” will certainly have its fans, though its loose construction needed further refinement to better justify such blunt (but effective!) choices. Still, with Fishback a riveting constant, well-deployed gallows humor, and more to the story than meets the eye, the buzz around “Swarm” is worth hearing out.
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Mar 15, 2023
Season 1 Review:
A spectacular showcase for Fishback. ... The only true misstep comes in the back half of the season, which features a big stylistic swing that not only fails, but manages to break the morbid trance the show spends so much time earning. ... That one miscalculation aside, “Swarm” is a trip worth taking.
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The PlaylistMar 23, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The vivid imagery, absurdist humor, and intelligent homages will do well to ensnare an audience to “Swarm.” While Dre’s erratic and compulsive behavior may be hard for some to stomach. Although the show only really scratches the surface of pop culture infatuation, it still manages to be a wild ride into the dark side of pop culture infatuation.
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Mar 17, 2023
Season 1 Review:
“Swarm” certainly isn’t for everyone, and without spoiling anything, viewers should be forewarned that it is dark, violent and occasionally unsettling. Yet the theme that the show tackles feels significant enough to deserve a hearing in this age where people form communities around Internet-connected passions, and Fishback is one of those performers who can keep you riveted without uttering a word, speaking volumes with the pain and longing in her eyes.
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Mar 17, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Fishback is the key to the watchability of Swarm. As her character becomes a more experienced killer, Fishback becomes more confident in her performance. The show is definitely stylishly shot (Glover directed the first episode), but much of that would be empty without Fishback’s performance.
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Mar 15, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Swarm is an incredibly bizarre series that’s definitely going to split opinion, and it’s easy to imagine a lot of people failing to make it to the end. That being said, if you can get on the same wavelength of such a strikingly unique, relentlessly eccentric, oftentimes emotionally manipulative, and relentlessly singular approach, then cult favorite status surely beckons.
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Mar 15, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Fishback is scintillating, giving a performance that had me rewatching laugh-out-loud or heartbreaking beats. ... It’s a performance of deliriously bizarre choices anchoring a show of deliriously bizarre choices, and I wish I could be as confidently effusive about Swarm as I am about its star.
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Mar 17, 2023
Season 1 Review:
"Swarm" plays with form the way "Atlanta" was able to completely switch styles from one episode to the next, and it finds freedom in its narrative looseness. If only it had more going on underneath its hood. ... But at least with Fishback in the driver's seat, the ride is never dull.
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Mar 23, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Fishback menacingly gleams in an incredible performance. ... Too committed to its goal of depicting a scandalous faction of fandom while making a light mockery of the world around it to really come away with much of a point—or even an engaging question. ... When Swarm lets go of its premise a little, that actually helps it achieve its goal, allowing us to finally cash in on the show’s promise.
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Mar 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Swarm feels boldest when it wonders when person-to-person devotion becomes abstract glorification, and what inner mechanics inspire someone to give themselves over to another. ... By separating Dre from one hive and dropping her into the orbit of another queen, Swarm sharpens its conflation of love and family with control and coercion. It’s too bad, then, that the series abandons the commune so quickly to put Dre back on fury road.
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Mar 17, 2023
Season 1 Review:
It feels as if no one really knew where they wanted to take things. In the balance of the season, the viscous, seductive ambience and dream-logic storytelling mostly fade out, replaced by high-concept, tonally garish episodes that hold your attention but stand alone like neon billboards, adding little to our understanding of Dre beyond the facts of her back story.
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Mar 15, 2023
Season 1 Review:
As a showcase for Fishback, Swarm is ideal. As cultural criticism, it can be intriguing and occasionally profound. But in its psychological underpinnings, the show conflates identity with pathology in some truly facile, potentially destructive ways. Although this is hardly the only charge that could put Glover in the crosshairs of the BeyHive, it’s the one that makes me doubt Swarm was worth the trouble.
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Mar 17, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Delirious and tense, the seven-part season is strongest in the early outings, when it’s unclear where Dre is headed and the writers more often buck plot conventions. Those episodes also suffer less from the series’ tonal messiness. ... But even her [Fishback's] marvellously versatile performance can’t make up for the wan character development and the tonal wobbliness that sink the series.
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Mar 16, 2023
Season 1 Review:
We watch, we cringe, we can't relate, and in the end it is not just meaningless but a bloody bore. Dominique Fishback, brilliant but ultimately wasted. ... The attempt by the show's creators to find some unexplored middle ground between wry comedy and outright horror is seldom successful, nor is their haphazard navigation between reality and dreams.
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