What Lurks Beneath

Why Night Swim is not just an “evil swimming pool movie”

- JACK SHEPHERD

JAMES WAN WAS SWIMMING around his pool late one night when he thought he saw someone watching him. A shiver ran up his spine. The malignant mind behind the Saw, Conjuring and Insidious franchises was scared. Yet he knew where he had seen this scene before: in a short film. “When you scare James Wan, there couldn’t be a higher compliment,” Bryce McGuire, the director of Night Swim, tells Red Alert.

Nine years on, his terrifying viral short has been expanded into a feature-length film, produced by Wan and horror super-producer Jason Blum. “It’s been a long and somewhat winding road,” McGuire says of Night Swim’s journey to the big screen. The initial problem was that the filmmaker – along with the short’s co-creator Rod Blackhurst – couldn’t come up with a compelling reason why Night Swim would make a good feature. After all, the basic premise is essentially “spooky swimming pool movie” – which, the duo thought, sounded like a one-scare wonder. However, after being approached countless times to expand on their story, they knew there must be something brooding under the water. “A lot of people shared our irrational fear of the pool, and we were like, ‘Thank god, we’re not alone,’” McGuire says. “Even as adults, there’s something ominous and evocative about that location.”