A backyard swimming pool.
A symbol of youth, status and wish-fulfillment, quintessentially American yet universal in its shimmering appeal. A life-enhancing luxury to those who can afford the cost, an absolute necessity for those poor souls who live in the most hellishly hot of places. A heavenly playground for people of any age, a devilish hazard for those tempted by its cool, sky-blue waters yet who lack the ability to tread its deepest, darkest parts.
Especially at night.
Based on Bryce McGuire’s acclaimed 2014 short film, Night Swim high dives into the deep end of horror as it takes the most banal pleasure of suburban life and transforms it into a wellspring of demonic evil in a movie that combines the style, impishness and wicked world-building that audiences have come to expect from horror film powerhouses Jason Blum and James Wan, with the eerie vibes and emotional resonance of classic eighties-era chillers like Poltergeist and Pet Sematary.
As the film floats into theatres across the globe this week, Peter Gray spoke with a collective of the creatives involved in bringing this thriller to life, including Executive Producer (and former Fangoria writer) Ryan Turek. Together, the duo touched on their love of the horror genre, how Ryan moved from magazine to the movies, and what he believes is the special sauce that continually brings audiences back to theatres to be scared.
Ryan, I’m very excited to talk to you. You’re a horror lover, like myself, and, not only that, you went from writing for Dread Central and Fangoria to an executive position at Blumhouse. I have to know how that shift came about for you?
The shift came through just doing opportunities like this. When you’re in the world of horror, and that’s your only focus, you’re kind of a big fish in a very small pond with lots of opportunities to meet the same people over and over. And (Jason) Blum was coming off the success of Paranormal Activity and was moving into sequels on that, and then Insidious and The Purge… that was kind of the time that the site I was working through was really thriving, and it put me in front of (Jason), and through conversations he got to know me a little bit better and how my brain works.
Thankfully I knew a couple people at Blumhouse at the time, so when a position opened up I got a phone call asking me if I wanted to move into film development. I never, ever thought I would get that job. I didn’t have any other experience other than journalism, but they said that they would get me there and get me up to speed on everything. It really made me see how Jason’s brain works. It’s just way outside the box. Rather than going with a traditional executive, he was, like, “I’m gonna get this really nerdy horror guy.”
I love that. And I feel like we all have that gateway horror movie that introduced us to the genre and fuelled that fire. What was it for you?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, it began with a book (for me). It was Stephen King’s “Cycle of the Werewolf”, and it had illustrations by Bernie Wrightson, and my dad was an avid book collector growing up, so he had horror novels all over the house. That was one, because it was illustrated, that was sitting out and I just started looking through it, and there was this particular image of a cop getting his face torn off by a werewolf, and I thought it was so cool, but also terrifying. I probably saw it way too early.
But the film that really just drove the love for the genre home was Fright Night from 1985. It was a movie that was a horror/comedy at the time, but it positioned the horror before the laughs, and it showed me how playful horror can be. It didn’t need to terrify me all the time, and I knew there were other movies like that, so I just told my folks that I loved horror movies. I still wasn’t able to get Fangoria magazine (though), that took a while. When I was in film school the love for horror was always on the backburner because I didn’t what I wanted to do in the industry. But then Scream came out in ’96 and, I don’t know, there was like a message on the other side of the screen that was telling me “It’s okay to make horror movies. You can live in this genre. You can live in this industry only doing horror movies.” From that point on that’s all I wanted to do.
That I can relate to. I remember seeing Scream when I was about 11-years-old, and it just stuck with me. And now we’re at number 6 all these years later. It’s so great!
It’s great, yeah.
And with Night Swim, how did that come about Blumhouse’s radar? Was Bryce McGuire’s short film one you were familiar with?
Yeah, absolutely. Bryce’s short, I was very aware of, and at the time Atomic Monster was developing it as a feature. Obviously, we are collaborating with them often, on films like M3GAN, so it was kind of something that was percolating in the back of my brain of “How do you make this a feature film?”, and thankfully Bryce wrote a great script that really laid out how you take a short idea, which was super high concept, and then layer it with the character drama that’s at the heart of every horror movie. It was just one of those movies that had a great hook to it, and, you know, a spooky pool. It really laid out the rules very clearly of how it works and how it thematically works in relation to what our characters want.
Horror so evidently dominated cinemas in 2023, and Blumhouse was a major part of that. We saw it with M3GAN and Insidious, as well as The Exorcist and Five Nights at Freddy’s. Absolutely insane! Do you have any inkling as to what that special sauce is as to the genre just keeps luring audiences back in?
I think people love to be scared. That’s never gone away. They love the ingenuity that horror can bring to the table. And, obviously, they want to see a little bit of themselves in the movie, too. They want to see people being pushed to extremes. People with needs and desires and emotional wants. Every good horror movie manifests an obstacle that works in relation to that emotion they’re going through. With this movie, there’s a disease that’s taking our main character out of the ballgame. He wants to get back in the ballgame. Oh, there’s a pool that’s giving him that wish? Every time he takes a dip he’s getting stronger. That just works so well. And when it’s cleverly written that way, and it’s punctuated with so many great scares, you’re in for a ride. And for over 100 years now audiences have loved horror. It’s an escape and a catharsis for them.
The trailer for Night Swim brilliantly doesn’t give us much, and without spoiling any of the lore that’s here, it gives as much as it takes. And there’s so much that could be explored further with such a concept. I know it’s very early, but horror seems to open itself up the most to continuations, so has there been discussions about exploring this world further?
You know, right now there are no conversations about that. But I’ve learned to never say never. Blum has said that about past titles, which we are now sequalising, so I think in order for a sequel to work, the kind of complexity of whatever character we’re going to put at the forefront of the next story has to work in relation to the pool rules. We can’t repeat ourselves. It can’t just be “Here’s a character who’s going to get this, and the pool is going to give it with a major sacrifice”… it’s just got to be super clever to tell a new story within this world.
Well, knowing you’ve gone from horror journalism to your position gives horror fans like me some hope. I love the genre so much, and as spoken about before with horror and its relatability, I found Night Swim‘s treatment of the main character’s MS added that layer of emotionality, which is so important in getting us as viewers further invested.
That’s super key, yeah. It’s got to be grounded and always relatable. But, you know, it’s fun to be a part of these movies. Every day I’m on set for something like (Night Swim), I just look at my colleagues and think “Not only do we get to make movies, we get to make scary movies!” I think that’s a heck of a lot more fun than making the old drama or comedy. They all have their challenges though, and, in this case, we were shooting underwater, and we had practical effects and VFX handoffs, but the goal is make big scary movies that help progress the genre and give something to the audience to keep horror alive. That’s a huge thing for horror fans like us.
Night Swim is screening in Australian theatres from January 4th, 2024.
