Every so often, a body of work comes along that begs the question, what the f*ck did I just watch?! Donald Glover and Janine Naber’s have done exactly that with the enthralling Black woman-led serial killer drama Swarm. If you’re one of the millions of viewers who came to watch Chloe Bailey and Damson Idris get it in and stayed for the credits, you definitely didn’t know what you were signing up for.
I didn’t intend on watching Swarm. Come on, it’s called Swarm, eerily similar to Beyonce and the Beyhive, starring one of Beyonce’s Parkwood artists. Silly. But that was the brilliance in it. At no point did director Donald Glover ever play coy about the dangerously close depictions to Beyonce. Basically, if you think it’s about Beyonce, that’s because it is. And if you didn’t get the hint, he reiterated it with the disclaimer, “This is not a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is intentional” at the top of every episode.
Swarm is dark, deliberate, and debilitating. Lead actress Dominique Fishback, whose track record boasts strong performances in Judas and the Black Messiah, Project Power, and The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, serves up a master class in acting in the unforgettably sinister Dre.
The swell around Swarm hasn’t died down. Here’s a few reasons everyone is still talking about the killer series.
Give Dominique Fishback All The Things
Dominique Fishback will be a frontrunner for best actress come award season. If not, we ride at dawn. We can now take “rising” from in front of Dominique’s name because she has arrived. Dominique transforms into Dre, the sister of Marissa (played by Chloe Bailey). Dre is obsessed with Ni’Jah and, we eventually learn, Marissa. Dre and Marissa are inseparable until Marissa commits suicide after her overly flirty and fine boyfriend Khalid (played by Damson Idris) cheats on her. Marissa’s death seemingly sends Dre over the deep…
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