Based on the acclaimed 2014 short film by Rod Blackhurst and Bryce McGuire, Night Swim stars Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) as Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, who moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Oscar® nominee Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin), and their two children. Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids 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.
Leading up to the release of Night Swim, Nick L’Barrow had the chance to chat with the minds behind the film, including Blumhouse producer and horror hound Ryan Turek about the evolution of the short film, creating sympathetic characters, and whether a film can be ‘too scary’ for general audiences!
Nick: Ryan, it’s a pleasure to meet you. How are you?
Ryan Turek: Pleasure to meet you as well. How are you?
Nick: I’m very well, thank you. I’m excited to talk about this film with you today because I am a huge horror fan, and I know you’re very much known for your love of horror, too. And I want to kick off with the evolution of Bryce McGuire’s [director of Night Swim] short film into this feature film. It’s been almost a 10-year journey now, and I’d like to find out what you think the most interesting evolution from the short film to the feature film has been from your point of view?
Ryan Turek: I think that because the short is super, super minimalistic, you know, it’s a vehicle to scare. And it’s a vehicle for very great scare. And, you know, when you have a short that is super minimalistic, it’s like, how do you build around that. Thankfully, Bryce had a pool as a backdrop. And pools, depending on how you look at them, can be very dangerous. Whether they’re slippery, or you fall off the diving board. I mean, we’ve all seen real life horror stories about people in accidents when running around pools.
But the other thing is, what’s at the bottom of the pool, you know? Like, when you’re in a pool, you can see the bottom, so there’s not really any fear of like what’s going to grab you like if you were in a lake or an ocean. But this pool operates outside of our real world, and it has it’s own rules and supernatural mechanics. So we were super excited about what happens when the bottom drops out, and you know, things are allowed to surface and allowed to manifest.
But, we’re equally excited about trying to figure out what the right story was around it. Bryce thankfully had a great script that he came to the table with where that was already like mapped out. As Blumhouse, thankfully, we didn’t have to do too much work [laughs]. We already had this great story about a family moving; the father having this desire, this dream pulled away from him way too early in life. And in wanting to take that back, and obviously this pool being able to give that to him. The ride there is very scary, and it’s scary for the entire family.
Nick: With you talking about how you had a great story about the family for this film, how important is it to have the emotional investment in these characters? Is there a balance of story and scare you find is in important?
Ryan Turek: Yeah, that’s first and foremost. You know, the movie has to stand on it’s own as a drama before we start layering in all of the scares. Great horror organically works when the supernatural threat or the physical threat works in direct relation to whatever the theme is, or whatever the character goal is, the moral conundrum that they face. So, you know, the wishing well allegory here in Night Swim worked so darn well.
We’ve seen it before. We’ve seen haunted house movies. We’ve seen The Amityville Horror. We’ve seen Poltergeist. But we’re seeing this in a new location, with new mechanics, and new rules. There’s something very primal about, you know, wanting something and seeing how much you can normalise this before it all goes wrong.
Nick: I do think the family dynamic is so interesting in this story. But then we do have the horror elements at play! I’m curious to know, as a producer, but also as someone who knows a lot about what the horror genre has to offer – is there a level of too scary? There are people like yourself who are well adjusted to horror, and others who want to stay away from it altogether. But when you’re making a film that you want a lot of people to see, is there ever a conversation about whether a film can be too scary?
Ryan Turek: No, no. Too scary is not the mantra around Blumhouse [laughs]. I will say, we don’t usually go into full gore territory. A movie like Halloween needs great slasher kills, and you’ll get the blood and guts with that. But, a supernatural movie like this, that’s kind of going for that Amblin feel, like Poltergeist – and even Poltergeist had some gross out moments – but, you know, there was a certain restraint, and it was scary.
And here, it’s just like, how do we push the limits. And I think the more you’re invested into the characters, the scarier each scene becomes. So, when Eve [Kerry Condon] is taking her “night swim”, we’re going to make sure that whatever scare we work in, it’s got to be the best.
Nick: That shot is amazing, it’s an effective scare!
Ryan Turek: I mean, that shot… Charlie Sarroff, our DP, he also did Smile, which we were big fans of. He also did this movie called Relic…
Nick: Yes! An Australian horror film!
Ryan Turek: Yeah! It’s a quieter horror film, but it’s really great, you know. Charlie and Bryce cooked up that whole POV of the camera swinging under the water to give you that freestyle swimming vibe.
Nick: It’s such a damn good shot. I wanted to lead off from the previous question about audiences finding horror too scary, because I have that issue with my partner. She hates horror, and it was an uphill battle to convince her to see The Black Phone with me last year, because I loved the movie so much that I really wanted to show her it. It was such a fun horror film. So, as someone who knows horror in and out – how do you convince non-horror watchers that horror can be a lot of fun?
Ryan Turek: I mean, horror can be fun. It can be informative. It can be educational, you know. Listen, I’m not going to take my wife to see Terrifier 2. I love Terrifier 2, but that’s the threshold! I know that I’m not going to take her to see that, but I know that a film like Night Swim, I can absolutely take her. She’s a genre fan too!
I usually use my folks as a barometer. I was raised by a horror loving family. I know that I can confidentially say my mum is gonna love Night Swim, you know. It’s the right amount of spooky. It doesn’t go to the extremes. It’s not gonna fry your nerves or anything.
I see horror as healthy. Horror movies are healthy. And if you can convince people that not all horror is exploitive, and not always going to violent extremes, then there is a lot of good in the genre. That it can teach you, there are good life lessons, you know. I mean, it made me an incredibly cautious human being growing up because I would run every scenario through my head. I challenge everybody to really embrace horror movies.
Nick: I love that! Ryan, I’m getting the wrap now, but like I said, as a huge horror fan, it’s been such a pleasure chatting to you today. I really appreciate your time, and I hope you and your family have a safe holidays!
Ryan Turek: Yes, absolutely! Thank you.
Thank you very much to Ryan Turek for his time, and to Universal Pictures for organising the interview. Night Swim is in Australian cinemas on January 4.
