Everything you fear is under the surface.’ That’s the pretty apt tagline of Night Swim. Releasing in theatres on January 12, the horror film in which a swimming pool becomes an adversary is directed by Bryce McGuire and is based on the 2014 short film of the same name by McGuire and Rod Blackhurst. t2 chatted with McGuire over a video call at the crack of dawn (4am, to be precise) to know more about his film which has been produced by horror masters Jason Blum and James Wan.
When we first watched Jaws, a lot of people of my generation and even after, developed a morbid fear of going into the water. With Night Swim, are you attempting to rekindle that fear and take it forward?
It was certainly inspired by my own childhood trauma induced by watching Jaws at too young an age combined with my overactive imagination as a child and being convinced that ‘Jaws’ (the shark named Bruce) was in the water with me at night because I couldn’t see the bottom! So if I can play that forward and give that aquatic trauma to a new generation of people, I would be so honoured.
And it is funny that as much as that movie traumatised me, I have rewatched Jaws. I mean, I don’t even know... I have done it 50 times! I have seen it in theatres every time it has been re-released. I can’t stay away from it. I would never dare compare Night Swim to Jaws. Jaws is such a masterpiece for me. But in terms of the ambition of it... totally. I would love to be someone’s Jaws. That would be a dream.
What made you want to adapt your own short film as your feature film directorial debut?
I have adapted other people’s short films for different studios and had a movie coming out this year (2023) called Baghead, which is an adaptation of a short that I am a writer on but did not direct. I think it makes a ton of sense to adapt your own work into a bigger platform because who knows it better than you? Who is going to work harder for it than you? And who is going to solve those problems in a more vigorous way than you? So it was a thrill for me to dip my toe in the water of the short film and then really just dive headfirst into the feature.
The short film has no story, it is just an exercise in atmosphere, exercise and environment. But once I realised how deep those waters were, how big that mythology could be, who these characters were and what they wanted, then I got excited and said: ‘I want to go all the way into this.’ Honestly, I still feel there is more of a story to be uncovered. But we will see if we get to do that or not, depending on how people watch this film.
I like all the water-related analogies that you have used in the answer....
You have to! It is obligatory! (Laughs)
One would imagine that having the framework of the short film would be a major advantage. But what were the biggest challenges of adapting it into a feature film?
A big challenge from the get-go was... you know it is a pool. No one is forcing you into that pool. But for this family going to this pool, how do you delay the awareness long enough? Or make them figure that once they are aware of how bad it is, it’s too late at that point. So that took some problem-solving and experimenting in just how to credibly keep the family from going into the water.
And part of how we did that was giving that experience to the kids first and kind of hiding it from the mom (played by Kerry Condon) and then progressively, the shit hits the fan and the pool party happens and they try and leave. No spoiler, but it is not as simple as you think it would be to do that. You have this obstacle that is presented by the pool. You also have this double-edged sword because the pool is not scary... it is good, it is positive, it is helping you and it is kind of fulfilling these different dreams for different characters. The truth is that it is tough to walk away from that drug. And so I tried to kind of lean into the character aspect of that... that it is hard to walk away from the thing that you think you need to be happy.
What is it about the innocuous and seemingly ordinary turning sinister that makes for such an effective horror film trope? Your producer James Wan has done that very well with The Conjuring universe....
This has been an ongoing cycle in horror for a long time. It always works. I grew up reading Stephen King and in Christine, he had a car that becomes this vehicle for terror and in Cujo, the family dog and in Pet Sematary, it is the cat.
In the Omen films, it was a child. You are not supposed to be scared of your kids, but the ‘evil kid’ movie has been around for a long time. You are supposed to be the protector of your kid, not be protected from your kid. We have some baseline social arrangements and that type of horror is subverting and it is betraying the things that we kind of rely on for society to function. Like we can’t go around being afraid of our kids or else we would be horrible parents and our society will collapse. It is almost like you are taking something that society needs to function and then you are cutting the legs out from under that.
Pools, you know, fit into a similar category. We build our vacations in the vicinity of this glistening, sexy body of water that represents status and diversion and leisure and escape. And suddenly, that is not cool anymore and we can’t trust it. It’s a mirage, it’s the Trojan horse. It’s something that you think is one thing and then it becomes another. Also, water makes for a really good horror trope. You have it packed in and made narrow and made it into a swimming pool.
Water is something that makes human beings feel small and vulnerable....
Exactly! In Night Swim, there is a little speech that the pool tech gives. He says that man evolved out of water, but some part of our reptilian brain knows that we don’t belong there anymore. Maybe that is why we want to tame it so hard. It is almost like conquering death. Man’s relationship with water is defined by the fact that we are not the apex predator. The second we go into the water, we drop down the food chain and we are vulnerable. We have not evolved to thrive in that ecosystem. We do not have gills and fins.
And it just takes so little. You conk your head while you are skiing, you pass out and you are gone. While swimming, you get a cramp, you clench up and you sink like a stone. As 21st-century humans, we are arrogant enough to think that we are immune and vulnerable to everything. And suddenly, water turns out to be the great equaliser. It is the great humbler because it is dangerous.
Year 2023 witnessed the resurgence of the horror genre in Hollywood and beyond. What do you make of this upward swing?
We are in a horror renaissance right now. In fact, over the last few years, we have seen the advent of filmmakers like Robert Eggers and Ari Aster who have elevated arthouse horror. I love those films. I went to school with Ari at AFI (American Film Institute), such a talented dude. Over the last few years, Midsommar, Hereditary (both directed by Aster), The Witch (helmed by Eggers) and The Babadook (by Jennifer Kent) have spiralled an arthouse first-wave renaissance.
What is happening now is fascinating because we are seeing the marriage of high-concept, commercial wide-release horror with an artistic kind of creativity and risk-taking. There is the amalgam of the best of both worlds with films like Barbarian, Smile, M3GAN and Talk to Me reaching a huge number of audiences. These films are satisfying for people who love horror and also for general audiences who crave something a little more artistic or idiosyncratic. I hope that Night Swim falls into that new school of horror because I think it is just the best time in history to be making genre movies.
Priyanka Roy
Which was your favourite horror watch of 2023? Tell t2@abp.in