Night Swim
Short description
Night Swim follows Ray Waller, a former baseball player whose career has been cut short by a degenerative illness. He moves into a new home with his wife Eve and their two children, Izzy and Elliot, and hopes the backyard pool will give the kids somewhere to play while also serving as physical therapy for him. Eve is persuaded that the house is a good choice, and Ray holds on to the possibility of returning to professional sport. What the family does not know is that the house carries a dark history, and the pool becomes the source of a malevolent presence that draws them into terror.
Bryce McGuire wrote and directed the film, expanding a short he had made a decade earlier under the same title; it is his second feature as director. Wyatt Russell stars as Ray, with Kerry Condon as Eve, Amélie Hoeferle as Izzy and Gavin Warren as Elliot. James Wan and Jason Blum produced through Atomic Monster and Blumhouse, with Universal Pictures releasing.
Made for a budget of 15 million dollars, Night Swim grossed around 55 million dollars worldwide, a strong return relative to its cost. Audience response has been mixed: on IMDb it holds 4.7 out of 10 from roughly 32,000 votes, and on TMDB 5.5 out of 10 from about 900 votes. A film critics' rating of 4.3 out of 10 from 182 reviews places professional opinion below even the modest audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Children attend Harold Holt School (1908-1967), the seventeenth Prime Minister of Australia, who disappeared while swimming in the ocean.
- In reality, there is no access from the house where the on-location shooting took place to the garage, and the pool is visible from the lawn in front of the house. The facade was constructed to make the pool invisible from the lawn.
- The entire mythology was invented and developed by director and screenwriter Bryce McGuire, although some of its aspects actually exist. The word “Temagami” sounds Japanese, but in reality it comes from the Ojibwe language (Ojibwe are a Native American people). It roughly means deep water, as Lucy, played by Jodie Long, explains in the film, but there are no Ojibwe legends about healing waters. McGuire drew on legends and tales of wells that grant wishes and keys that bestow healing. It is widely believed that if you throw a coin into a well or even into a fountain basin (in other words, make an offering or sacrifice), a wish may come true. While preparing for the film, McGuire studied various cultures in terms of their people's attitude towards water – for example, Celtic mythology and the legends of the natural well (cenote) of Chichen Itza in Mexico, where the Mayan god of rain was said to reside. Among other things, McGuire drew inspiration from the Bible – specifically the references to the healing properties of the Jordan River. He wanted to explore the aspect of the relationship with water based on sacrifice and receiving something in return, hence the premise that the pool will require something in exchange for a blessing.
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