Up for grabs: Night Swim… 2 masters of horror team up for demonic swimming pool movie

Fans of midnight swims? Better watch out! After Saw, Insidious, Conjuring and M3GAN productions, Mortal Kombat, James Wan returns with Night Swim. The director and producer team up here with another outstanding modern horror producer: Jason Blum. The two men actually merged their companies Blumhouse Productions and Atomic Monster and will now work together. Night Swim is their second collaboration since M3GAN.

Written and directed by Bryce McGuire, Night Swim is a feature-length adaptation of the director’s 2014 short film. This supernatural thriller sees Ray Waller, (Wyatt Russell), a former professional baseball player who had to give up his career due to a degenerative disease, moves into a new home with his family: his wife Eva (Kerry Condon), their daughter. Izzy (Amelie Hoeferle) and their youngest son (Gavin Warren). The whole family hopes to enjoy the swimming pool in their new home. But this house hides a dark past, and they unwittingly awaken an evil force that plunges them all into the depths of absolute horror.

Fear of everyday objects/places

Here, the filmmaker takes one of America’s suburbanites’ favorite pastimes to fascinate and terrify him. Bryce McGuire In the press kit, he explains that the idea for this film was born out of his aquaphobia.

“It is impossible for me to ignore water. I grew up in Florida, a land surrounded on all sides by the sea, with a climate that is difficult to bear unless you swim, and I know the existence of drownings, hurricanes, boat accidents, shark attacks. In this context, we quickly fear and respect the water element.”

He adds: “Swimming pool is a synonym of social status, distraction, fun. He’s attractive and sexy, and that’s what makes him so dangerous. With its bright colors, its turquoise water, it calls us like a siren. But once in the water, when the light goes out, suddenly there is an abyss. I also like to call up common childhood memories like touching the bottom of the drain, fishing dead insects from the surface, sticking your foot in the cleaning pipe, playing Marco Polo to transform them into scary moments..”

He knows terror because the filmmaker was obsessed with horror movies and Stephen King novels. Stories that also had a big impact on him Night swim, especially the idea of ​​repurposing everyday objects to make them dangerous. He says : “An inanimate object or place that becomes a source of mystery and suffering, and the cradle of our most secret desires, is an idea that has remained etched in my imagination. It’s always the things that seem the most attractive to us that have the ability to do the most damage..”

But the idea of ​​the film also came from a childhood memory. “I saw Jaws When I was 10 years old. At that time we had a swimming pool and I remember one evening my little brother turned off the light while I was swimming. I knew the pool was only 10 by 20 feet, but I was certain that something horrible was rising toward me from its depths.“- he adds.

Adapted from a short film that made a splash

Childhood fears that led to a short film in 2014 Night swim, adapted today in full length. Written and directed by Bryce McGuire and his close friend Rod Blackhurst 10 years ago, the film was shot in the backyard of musician Michelle Branch. Megalyn Echikuunwoke (Almost Family) played the role of a young woman who disappears into the pool during a night swim.

The short film created a buzz on YouTube and launched Bryce McGuire’s career. Among his fans was Atomic Monster VP Judson Scott, who executive produced the short film and showed it to his boss. James Wan. “Watching Night Swim, there was no doubting Bryce’s cinematic prowess. The story was mysterious and exciting, and Bryce knew how to make it even more complex and terrifying, while still giving it a strong emotional resonance.“says the producer, who is always looking for young new talents.

Filmed in natural surroundings

Finding a suitable location to shoot a feature film was not easy. Ideally, Bryce McGuire would like to build a pool on the Hollywood set, but the rainy winter of 2022-2023 has disqualified that option.

So the team began scouting extensively in Southern California: “We searched every neighborhood in Los Angeles for a house with a pool. We needed an impressive swimming pool with a large garden around it. When one of the characters was alone in the water, I wanted to give the impression that it was an island surrounded by darkness. I also wanted big trees that weren’t palm trees, which aren’t easy to find in Los Angeles, to give the impression that the story could take place anywhere in the United States.

We tried to combine several locations: the facade of one house with the garden of another and the swimming pool of a third, but it quickly turned into a nightmare in terms of planning and logistics,” says the director, who finally found his happiness in Altadena. A city with a strong ethnic mix, located in Pasadena Heights, about twenty kilometers northeast of Los Angeles. The house met all our criteria: the property was surrounded by large scrub oaks that gave the impression of a huge blackberry ready to be devoured. The swimming pool was over 2.75m deep and 13m long, with a diving board and an interesting design.”

Some scenes that required more depth were filmed in the 4-meter-deep Olympic-sized swimming pool in Chatsworth, California.

For the opening scenes, when the Wallers discover an abandoned swimming pool full of dead leaves and moss that Ray accidentally falls into, production designer Hilary Gurtler and her team took large vinyl prints and shot the bottom. the purpose To create the illusion that the water was dirty without risking damage to the pool, but also for the inconvenience of fighting in the mud for the White Russell.

Although some shots required computer-generated imagery, most of the film was shot “wet for wet” (like Avatar: The Waterway and Deep House), i.e. in water, as opposed to “dry for wet”. “Techniques (such as The Little Mermaid and Aquaman) that use smoke, color filters, lighting effects, fans and/or the impression of being underwater in slow motion. The swimming pool was therefore central to the story and set.

Night swim Must see in cinema.