James Wan and Jason Blum, powerhouse team-up behind “M3gan,” are back with “Night Swim,” now showing

In 2014, director Bryce McGuire made Night Swim, an acclaimed five-minute short 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 among its many fans was Judson Scott, executive vice president at Atomic Monster, who then recommended the short to Atomic Monster founder and horror master James Wan. “It was abundantly clear from watching the short that Bryce was a gifted filmmaker with a command of craft and tone,” Wan, co-producer for Night Swim the movie, 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.”

“Doing horror movies is a way of taking control of my fears,” says Amélie Hoeferle, who plays one of the Waller children in the supernatural thriller “Night Swim,” opening this week

“The children were great!” says Academy Award nominee Kerry Condon of Amélie Hoeferle and Gavin Warren, who play her character’s children in Night Swim, a new supernatural thriller opening in cinemas this week. 

In Night Swim, based on director McGuire’s acclaimed 2014 short film of the same name, Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) is a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness. Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades his wife, Eve (Condon), that their new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids (Hoeferle and Warren) and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror. 

Wyatt Russell talks about the sinister pool and his troubled character in the supernatural thriller “Night Swim”

Like his Night Swim character, Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) was a former athlete, one of the reasons director Bryce McGuire wanted him for the role of former baseball pro Ray Waller. 

For the actor, being able to draw on his own experience as an athlete definitely helped his performance. “There are aspects of this character that obviously I’ve felt before, or seen in people I know, where you’re sort of losing your ability and sense of identity to injury,” says Russell, who played hockey on the amateur and professional levels for six years, until injuries forced him to quit. “I know the feeling of wanting to do anything, even if it’s detrimental to yourself or your family, to keep playing; it’s a hard drug to let go of. There was that element of it that I know Bryce wanted, and I was able to do that because I had lived aspects of that life.”

Academy Award nominee Kerry Condon combines her love of cinema and water in the supernatural thriller “Night Swim”

Kerry Condon in Night Swim Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

One of the reasons Kerry Condon wanted to dive into Night Swim was the water.

“I was always interested in doing swimming on-camera and combining those two great interests for me,” Condon, an accomplished swimmer who swam competitively as a child, says. “I am a good swimmer and I wanted to show my physicality. I love water in movies and I think filming in water is beautiful, so I wanted to be a part of that and learn more about it.”

Producers James Wan & Jason Blum, director Bryce Mcguire talk about their new supernatural thriller “Night Swim”

Horror classics such as Poltergeist, Christine, Burnt Offerings and Jaws inspired Night Swim – well, these and a touch of aquaphobia. 

“I’ve always had water on the brain,” director Bryce 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.”