JAWS influences water-based horror Night Swim

After seeing JAWS (1975) we all had that irrational fear of there being sharks in the swimming pool, right?

Director Bryce McGuire spoke to GamesRadar+ about the origins of his feature debut, the swimming pool-set Night Swim, the first feature film released under Blumhouse and Atomic Monster's new joint banner.

Atomic Monster is the production company of James Wan, who himself has been hugely influenced by JAWS – alongside his SAW and frequent collaborator Leigh Whannel – with Wan telling The Hollywood Reporter: “It’s the movie that made me terrified of the great, watery unknown. It educated me on the power of suspense filmmaking (along with every other movie by Steven Spielberg) through camerawork, editing, music, and mise en scene.” 

Night Swim – like SAW based on a short film – ups the ante on swimming pool related horror, which as a location has often played as a memorable location and set piece in the likes of It Follows (2015), Final Destination 5 (2011) and The Pool (2018), and who could forget the uncompleted swimming pool horror of the Steven Spielberg written and produced Poltergeist (1982).

This latest film to dip its toe into the water is about a man who moves his family into a new house in an attempt to settle into a normal life. Not long after, unexplained supernatural events begin to happen around the backyard swimming pool – which is possessed by a malevolent spirit.

McGuire said: “The swimming pool contained deep and dark secrets that I was convinced were rising beneath me to grab my skinny flailing legs as a, you know, nine-year-old boy when the lights went out. And so, it was just that kind of irrational childhood phobia that I felt after watching JAWS and then going into a pool and just being totally convinced that I was not alone – and realizing other people had their own versions of that."

And a swimming pool also played a key part in the success of JAWS and helped make one of cinema’s greatest ever jump scares. The Ben Gardner head scene – with Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) finding a shark tooth in the hull of a damaged boat – was filmed in the swimming of the Oscar-winning film’s editor, Verna Fields.

McGuire added: “We don't belong in water. We're not an apex predator in water. The water can be very humbling. Even in the safest, most well-decorated, romanticized version of that water. It's still water."

And that poster for Night Swim, with blood spreading towards an unsuspecting female swimmer evokes images of the great white shark closing in on Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie).

Night Swim is now on release in the US and UK, let us know in the comments if you think the pool horror will sink or swim at the box office.

Words by Dean Newman

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