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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
17
Mixed:
9
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
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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