Taglines: Everything you fear is under the surface.
Night Swim (2024) movie storyline. A woman swims in swimming pool at night. But something watches her. What better way to relax after a hectic day in the office than a long and cool night swim under the stars? Immersed in the aqueous element like a fetus inside the mother’s womb, the unsuspecting Eve enjoys the water in the privacy of her house; however, she is not alone. Apart from Margot, her cat, an intangible menace in the form of a shadowy night watcher observes from afar–invisible like the midnight breeze, yet very real. Is Eve in danger? Is this her last dive?
Night Swim is feature length version of the 2014 short film about a woman swimming in her pool at night terrorized by an evil spirit. It is an American crime thriller film directed by Bryce McGuire and starring Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Nancy Lenehan, Ben Sinclair, Jodi Long, Eddie Martinez, Gavin Warren, Amélie Hoeferle, Ellie Araiza, Elijah J. Roberts and Eleanor T. Threatt. The screenplay was written by Bryce McGuire. The fimk was released on January 5, 2024 in the United States by Universal Pictures International (UPI).
About the Production
Directed by Bryce McGuire from his screenplay, Night Swim takes the most banal pleasure of suburban life and transforms it into a wellspring of demonic evil in a movie that combines the style, impishness and wicked world-building that audiences have come to expect from horror film powerhouses Jason Blum and James Wan, with the eerie vibes and emotional resonance of classic eighties-era chillers like Poltergeist and Pet Sematary.
The allusions and echoes of eighties pop culture not only nod to McGuire’s inspirations but have thematic purpose. “We set the cold open in the eighties in part because I wanted to evoke the feeling of nostalgia from older movies like Poltergeist, Christine, Burnt Offerings, or Jaws that inspired Night Swim,” McGuire says. “Most of the movie takes place in the unspecified present day, but in many ways the movie is about letting go of the past, so it felt right to indulge that feeling of nostalgia at the top.”
The film connects to McGuire’s own childhood and adolescence and, perhaps not surprisingly, the inspirations for Night Swim lie in a touch of aquaphobia. “I’ve always had water on the brain,” McGuire says. “Growing up in Florida, surrounded by ocean on three sides, in a climate that can only really be survived by partaking in water ritual, knowing friends who drowned, hurricanes that flooded homes, boating accidents, shark attacks, you come to have a kind of fear and reverence for the water.”
As McGuire became increasingly interested in movies as a kid, his wary regard for the water flowed naturally into an interest in seaside thrillers. “Probably the first horror film I ever saw was Creature from the Black Lagoon, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since; I have a Creature tattoo on my right bicep,” says McGuire, who also cites Night of the Hunter and The Abyss as formative experiences. “And, of course, there was Jaws. I saw that movie when I was 10 years old. We had a swimming pool at the time, and I remember treading water by myself at night when my younger brother turned the lights out. And even though I knew the pool was only 9 feet deep and 18 feet wide, I was certain beyond any doubt that the water was an abyss and something horrible was rising toward me from the depths.”
Other classics of the horror genre influenced his emerging aesthetic, too, including The Shining, The Sixth Sense and The Exorcist. “They are scary, high-concept stories, but there’s a very human throughline at the core,” McGuire sys. The novels of Stephen King made a mark, too, specifically ones that turned humdrum features of everyday life—the family dog; a car; a toy—into talismans and vessels of supernatural evil. “The idea of an inanimate object or location being a source of mystery, terror, a crucible for someone’s innermost wishes, imprinted itself on my imagination. It’s always the things that are prettiest on the outside that can harm us the most.”
All of McGuire’s terrors and tastes find potent and poignant expression in Night Swim. “The pool represents status, diversion, fun,” McGuire says. “It’s sexy; it’s seductive, and that’s what makes it deadly. The colors are rich and vibrant; the cool glowing turquoise water invites us like a siren call. But in the water, when the lights go out, it feels big. I also loved the idea of tapping into the universal memories we all have with the pool from our childhoods—reaching into the drain flap, skimming out dead bugs from the surface, getting your leg caught in the pool cleaner tube, playing ‘Marco Polo’—and turning these memories into unique scares. I would always say on set, ‘I want to smell the chlorine.’ I hope people smell the chlorine when they watch this movie on a big screen.”
Some have already caught a hint of Night Swim’s pungent approach to horror: In 2014, McGuire made an acclaimed five-minute short, “Night Swim,” in collaboration with his good friend, filmmaker Rod Blackhurst (Blood for Dust; the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary Amanda Knox).
Shot in the backyard of Grammy-winning musician Michelle Branch and featuring actress Megalyn Echikunwoke (Fox’s Almost Family) as a young woman who goes missing in her own pool when an evening swim leads to a close encounter with something creepy, the short made a splash on YouTube and helped McGuire launch a successful screenwriting career.
Among the short’s many fans was Judson Scott, executive vice president at Atomic Monster and a Night Swim executive producer, who recommended the short to Atomic Monster founder James Wan. “It was abundantly clear from watching the short that Bryce was a gifted filmmaker with a command of craft and tone,” James Wan says. “The story it told was so mysterious and evocative, and Bryce had a compelling vision for how it could be turned into something bigger, stranger and scarier while also being emotionally resonant.”
Expanding the short into a feature film involved creating an epic, supernatural mythology with a gothic fairytale undercurrent for the story’s sinister swimming pool. McGuire gave his wicked water hole layers of dimension, both figuratively and literally. More important, of course, was creating characters with compelling arcs and credible motivations—and temptations—that could keep them swimming in the proverbial pool from hell.
At the heart of the movie is the Waller family: Ray and Eve, a devoted couple who’ve spent most of their married life moving from city to city because of his career as a professional baseball player; and their kids, Izzy, a high school Freshman and budding competitive swimmer, and her younger brother Elliot, a bright, sensitive, awkward middle-schooler.
After Ray is diagnosed with a degenerative illness, forcing him to retire from baseball, the Wallers put down roots, buying a simple, two-story house with a big backyard that has the potential to be a revitalizing oasis, as long they can properly purify its gunky, spring-fed swimming pool that has gone mysteriously unused for many, many years.
“As soon as you start with the iconic backyard swimming pool as the central location and antagonist, you’re already surrounded by certain ideas and imagery,” McGuire says. “What does the pool represent? What did it mean in culture? What does it mean to me? How has it been used in other movies?
The pool may be the most iconic symbol of the American dream. So, we started thinking about who this family was and what their dream was. Even though this is the story of a professional baseball player who gets sick and must rethink his entire identity, what the family wants when they move into this house is universal.
Health, stability, community, the pursuit of happiness. And the pool promises this to each of the family members in different ways. Each character was chosen to represent some fundamental wish or desire at each stage in life—childhood, adolescence, adulthood and finally, someone who medically is representing old age. They are closer to death, and the desire for youth, strength, and health is the strongest. Like the American dream itself, the movie asks the same question: What do you need to be happy and what are you willing to do to get it?”
McGuire’s partners at Atomic Monster were thrilled with McGuire’s script. “It checked off all the boxes for the kind of movies we love to make,” says Scott. Among many scenes that captured his imagination for Night Swim’s potential was the way McGuire had written a sequence in which a game of “Marco Polo” takes a suspenseful, sinister turn.
“It struck me as an instantly iconic horror movie scene that everyone would go nuts over,” says Scott, likening the set-piece to the way James Wan staged the famous ‘hide-and-clap’ scene in The Conjuring. “I loved how he took this childhood game that almost everyone can relate to and turned it into something audiences have never seen in a horror movie before.”
Helping to propel Night Swim toward production was another short film written and directed by McGuire, “Every House Is Haunted,” about a young couple that buys a home with a troubled history, with themes and style that served as further proofs of McGuire’s directing talent and the core concepts of Night Swim. Also helping the cause: the blockbuster smash M3GAN, a joint venture between horror juggernauts Atomic Monster, founded by James Wan, and Blumhouse, founded by Oscar®-nominated producer and CEO Jason Blum.
Looking to replicate M3GAN’s success with another similar team-up, the companies set Night Swim in motion for a spring 2023 start.
“What I liked about Bryce’s script was how it fleshed out the premise of a ‘spooky swimming pool’ in a credible, relatable, emotional way that felt contemporary and relatable yet classical at the same time,” Jason Blum says. “It’s scary; it’s emotional; it keeps you engaged by constantly begging the question: ‘What would you do if this happened to you?’”
Night Swim (2024)
Directed by: Bryce McGuire
Starring: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Nancy Lenehan, Ben Sinclair, Jodi Long, Eddie Martinez, Gavin Warren, Amélie Hoeferle, Ellie Araiza, Elijah J. Roberts, Eleanor T. Threatt
Screenplay by: Bryce McGuire
Production Design by: Hillary Gurtler
Cinematography by: Charlie Sarroff
Film Editing by: Terri Taylor
Costume Design by: Christie Wittenborn
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures International (UPI)
Release Date: January 5, 2024
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