ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim recently spoke with director Bryce McGuire, who is directing the next movie from Blumhouse named Night Swim. At New York Comic Con 2023, McGuire talked about his upcoming film, which is produced by Jason Blum and James Wan under their Blumhouse Productions and Atomic Monster banners.
Jonathan Sim: What were some of the horror films that inspired not only Night Swim, but also your filmmaking style?
Bryce McGuire: I feel like because I grew up on a peninsula with water on three sides, I’ve always been kind of tantalized and haunted by the water. The water is alluring and we need it to survive, but it’s also dangerous and it hides secrets. So movies like Jaws was actually hugely influential to me. I’ve seen that movie hundreds of times. Literally, I’ve seen the movie so many times. James Cameron’s The Abyss always was frightening for me in the way that that world opens up beneath the water, what could be hiding down there. Creature from the Black Lagoon, it’s classic for me, one of the first horror movies I ever saw. And then, you know, I, I love like early Shyamalan, like I was a huge fan of like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs…
Those are some of my favorites.
They’re amazing, and they’re so character forward, and they really feel like, first and foremost, they’re about people. And the concept is being used to tell a human story. That’s something that we definitely try to do on Night Swim as well. It’s a story of a family that’s dealing with a major setback in the husband being sick and having this degenerative illness, and they’re trying to figure out how to start over and how to reshape their life. And they’re put through a crucible to test what’s important to them.
And much like a Shyamalan thing, it’s like there’s a lesson learned, like what gives you value, what gives you identity, what gives you happiness. In a way, the pool becomes a test of what we care about most and what we’re willing to kind of sacrifice.
That sounds incredible. I’m so excited to see it. Night Swim started out as a short film, so I’m wondering how do you go from making a short film to landing that first meeting with people like James Wan and Jason Blum?
So that short, we made that short a long time ago, eight years ago now. It got sent around town. A lot of people were interested and you know, wanted to know what the concept was, but the feature was, and for a long time, I just was like, I’m not, I don’t know, I think a short’s a short.
And then I had this idea that kind of broke all that open for me and it was like, no, this has to be a feature. This is a feature’s worth story. There’s a feature-level mystery here, feature-level concept that I knew then I could take that pitch out. So basically had the short, had a treatment, had a pitch, and we came and pitched to a bunch of studios, like every major studio in town kind of had a bit of like a competitive situation where multiple studios were interested and then ultimately landed exactly where it was supposed to land with Atomic Monster. And James won initially, and then Blumhouse joined forces in the last couple years to make that happen. So that’s the best right there. Yeah.
Of course. And what do you think made the Atomic Monster and Blumhouse a perfect fit for this project in particular?
James loves taking something that’s supposed to be safe and ruining it.
I know, I’ve seen that.
He loves it. Whether it’s a doll or, I mean that’s done, but there’s almost mischievousness in his love for just like, you think that’s fun, that’s safe? No. It is done. You’re done. Like you never look at it the same. So I feel like that level that, to that super high concept, commercial aspect of taking something that’s familiar and safe and ruining it with—Blumhouse really like, brought a lot of character focus, and really cared a lot about these roles and these characters and this family’s journey. And I think that it was the perfect kind of marriage of the high concept, high-octane thrills and chills with this kind of thematic depth and kind of character stuff going on. So it was, I feel very, very lucky. Yeah.
