Interview: St. Pete native Bryce McGuire explains how home plays into his new movie, ‘Night Swim'

Water has long been an element of Bryce McGuire’s art. Lovedream, the landmark 2010 folk-pop album from his band Grecian Urns is rife with allusions to it, including descriptions of redfish prowling the glistening Loxahatchee River. The director and screenwriter’s 2013 Southern short “Jesus Fish,” a story about a would-be religious con artist and the community around him, takes place on a bioluminescent Tennessee lake.

One of his first short stories, written when McGuire was 13 years old, is about a kid who walks the seashore to school because kids bully him. The child regularly sees murmurations—greenback minnows in the ocean, sparrows above—and soon starts having visions of the bullies disappearing. At one point the minnows swirl away and one of the bullies’ bodies washes up on shore.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, or what that’s all about. I’ll let Jung or Freud, or some combination, figure that out,” McGuire, 36, said. “But yeah, water is always on the brain, always inspiring to me, and I feel like I’ll probably keep going back to that well, consciously or unconsciously for forever, probably.”

McGuire—a St. Pete expat, who went to Keswick Christian School in Seminole before studying film in Tennessee and California—spoke to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay the morning after a long night in his current hometown, Los Angeles. His voice was hoarse, but he was riding high on the release of his new movie, “Night Swim,” celebrated with a full red carpet at Hotel Figueroa.

The 98-minute feature film was borne of McGuire’s 2014 short with the same title, which garnered a cult-following that demanded an expansion. The flick is distributed by Universal and produced by James Wan, the filmmaker behind the “Saw” and “The Conjuring franchises, and Jason Blum, the producer of the “Halloween” films and “The Black Phone.” It finished its first weekend at no. 2 in U.S. box office sales after opening on Jan. 5.

Freaky things happen in the water for this movie, too.

“Night Swim” is built around Ray Waller (played by Wyatt Russell of “Black Mirror” and Marvel’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”), an ex-big-leaguer who has developed multiple sclerosis and is having a hard time disassociating his value from his ability to hit a very small ball a long distance. The pool at their new home is supposed to help with his, and his family’s, moving on and moving up.

On the surface, the film about an absurd demonic pool has an almost escapist, ‘80s camp element. Its vibe all at once references classics like “Poltergeist,” “Jaws,” “The Amityville Horror” and “Burnt Offerings.” A deeper look unveils some pathos, humanity, and something of a Faustian bargain. The pool is obviously the American dream. It lets the viewer think about aspirations and goals—and beyond those, the things someone believes can make them happy, then the price people are willing to pay to attain them.

“I love the multiple layers of my favorite movies that don’t have to take themselves so serious, serious, serious, but also have more to chew on there if you’re a thoughtful viewer,” McGuire added. “I hope that’s kind of the experience for people watching it.”
While “Night Swim” is meant to take place somewhere in the breadbasket of America, the Wallers’ pool also has something of a connection to the waters in and around Florida.

The score is by Mark Korven (“The Lighthouse,” “The Witch”), but McGuire consulted friends like St. Pete songwriter Alexander Charos about music for the film, and they listened to artists from all over the state. Ultimately, Bay area indie-pop duo Team Callahan reimagined their 2018 bop “Backwards Hat” into a more Steve Winwood-esque, ‘80s dance floor rager for a pool party scene. McGuire also reconnected with Even Beyond Even Beyond, the band of Colton Davie (who was actually director of photography on the original “Night Swim”), to write a new song, “Deeper,” for the credits.

His Florida-based friend and “Every House Is Haunted” special effects supervisor Sam Ragland skipped visual effects for the movie’s titles, opting instead to use projection to shoot the titles into a pan of water that bounced off a mirror to the ceiling before being photographed. It’s the first time McGuire skipped VFX for a movie’s titles. “​​Sam is a mad genius,” he added.

And McGuire probably would’ve never dove into film had it not been for his 10th grade teacher, Steve Hobbs, who not only introduced his students to cinema, but played in a beloved, deeply poetic band called The Sugar Oaks. Watching his teacher be creative was inspiring. Hobbs is no longer with us, but McGuire knows we’re all headed to the same place. The art someone makes, or the person they simply are for others, can be a seed with the same kind of ripple effect.

“Steve will never get to sit under this tree but many other people will because he planted that seed, so to take the positive side of that—I just honor that we all have that role in someone else’s life,” McGuire added. “He’s the one that I really wish would be able to see this film.”

For now, McGuire hopes moviegoers clear their minds, take a breath and meet “Night Swim” on its own terms. Afterall, he likes making thrillers because scaring other people allows him to feel less alone with his own fears.

“Whatever associations you have with monsters, and horror, the genre in general, or the concept. Just let it all go. Just wade in slowly, let your body acclimate to the water,” he said. “And just see where it takes you.”

And what does it take to scare McGuire? Some uncertainty should be involved.

“I do think that the best stories, what's gonna be most inspiring for us to pull from, is if you're writing something where you're unsure of the answer to it,” he said about what scares him most in the horror genre.

Up next for him is work on, “Bad Bloom,” a horror fairytale starring and produced by Vera Farmiga. The film, naturally, takes place near the water on a remote island.

But as for what happens beyond that, McGuire can’t be certain.

Like Ray Waller, he too has to think about his own goals, career and what he’s willing to give up to get there. Still hoarse, McGuire brought it back to the glitz and joy of premiere night, a long time coming in a journey filled with wins, letdowns, and the sacrifices his family has had to make for him to be a filmmaker.

“All of that stuff is very intoxicating. And it is almost like a drug,” he said about Waller’s big league career, and to some degree his own journey. “I mean, I very much view this as it's kind of a story about addiction in a way—the guy that cannot let go of a certain version of himself. He cannot accept the person that is just a father that is just sick, that is just a husband, that is just a human.”

McGuire wondered how he would react if someone were to ask him to walk away from it all right now. What would he do to keep the trajectory of his own career going?

“The best of me, the enlightened part, wants to say, ‘No, I don't need that. What I need is my two kids, Louis and Quincy and my wife Katie. And the family I have, and the experience of having people in my life that love me, and I love.’,” he explained.

But he wonders about the part of him that wrestles with temptation, the darkness inside himself. That sort of moral crucible is what he wanted to explore in “Night Swim.”

“I know what the right thing is to do. I know what I want. And maybe just by telling a story that reminds you of the cautionary tale, maybe that makes us all look a little more closely at what gives us value in our own life and just for me what it makes me not want to be the Ray,” he added. “It makes me want to be the good in the present and the meaning in the people around me.”