A Q&A with Chattanooga-based filmmaker Bryce McGuire on his new Universal Pictures release, ‘Night Swim’

The release of “Jaws” in the summer of 1975 caused generations of moviegoers to fear the ocean. “Night Swim,” opening in preview screenings Jan. 4, may do the same for backyard swimming pools.

The supernatural thriller from Universal Pictures marks the big-screen directorial debut of Chattanooga resident Bryce McGuire, who expanded a short film of the same name into feature length. It stars Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon as Ray and Eve Waller, who move into a new house with their children, Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren).

Ray, a former baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, hopes the backyard swimming pool can provide fun for the kids and physical therapy for him. What they don’t know is that a dark secret from the home’s past will soon unleash a malevolent force beneath the surface.

McGuire, 35, spoke with the Chattanooga Times Free Press by phone earlier this month amid his post-production duties.

“I’m at the Four Seasons in West Hollywood,” he said. “In two days, I’ll be getting on a flight, arriving at the Chattanooga Airport, to come back home and be there for the holidays. I’m exhausted but happy to come back home.”

He and his wife, Kait Kopeski McGuire, have two boys: Lewie, 7, and Quincy, 3. McGuire is originally from Florida. His wife’s family is from the Chattanooga area.

Here are excerpts from the conversation, edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: What post-production tasks are left to do?

A: The sprint to the finish is sound, color and visual effects.

The last thing you do when you’re about to deliver a picture, you do color grade, the look of the picture, the color temperature based on the scene. Do you want to bring out more light? More shadows?

We’re also doing the sound mix. Sound is a huge part of movies, but it’s especially a huge part of horror.

I was at three different locations last week, working overtime most every night. It’s pretty intense, pretty exhausting. All those last-minute touches add so much to the film. It’s hard to overstate how much the last polish matters.

Q: Tell me about the casting. You have Kerry Condon, whose performance in “The Banshees of Inisherin” gained her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, and Wyatt Russell, perhaps best known for the Marvel Studios television miniseries “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”

A: Wyatt was actually the first cast. He was such a great get. He made so much sense for the role. Just like the character in the movie, he’s a former professional athlete (ice hockey). He really understood the sacrifice athletes have to make, what their bodies and minds go through, what their families go through. He gravitated to the material and playing this person who spent his whole life as a baseball player who gets sick and can’t do that job anymore. Physically, he’s a good athlete, and he also understood the mindset: “Who am I outside that identify? What’s the next chapter of my life?” Wyatt really understood that.

The afternoon I met Kerry Condon, that morning she swam a mile off the coast of Santa Monica. I thought, “The stars are aligning.” So much of the movie takes place in the water. It’s a very physical role, intense water-based stuff. Very challenging. She was really excited about it. She’s a phenomenal actress. She had earned a Golden Globe nomination that morning.

Q: “Night Swim,” the 2024 feature film, with a run time of 98 minutes, is based on “Night Swim,” a 2014 short with a running time of 4 minutes, which you wrote and co-directed with your friend Rod Blackhurst. (Blackhurst co-wrote the feature film.) How did you expand on the premise?

A: We knew the short was going to be a very simple concept of: Can you make the backyard swimming pool scarier than it actually is? We were in our 20s. We’d be in the pool swimming at night, talking and remembering the feeling of being a kid with an irrational phobia. When the lights went out, the pool felt deeper than it should be. It felt bigger, like an ocean. Can we tap into that fear? How many other people share that fear?

When we made (the short film) and put it online, we found out that hundreds of thousands of other people shared that fear as adults. We thought, “There’s something here.” That was the beginning for us. We kept asking ourselves, “What’s the bigger idea? What’s the feature?” For a long time, we didn’t have an answer to that. We didn’t want to be repetitive. Three years later, we had the bigger answer, looking at the mythology, the benefits of the family pool as this family moves into a new house.

To begin with, the pool’s an awesome place. You have the husband who’s sick. The family has moved around a bunch. They haven’t had stability. The first move to the pool is positive. There’s the water therapy. They’re planting roots. They’re making a life here.

I think that was huge knowing it wasn’t going to be a repeated gag (from the short film). It’s not just a woman being terrorized. This is a family with something to lose. You had to invest in their drama, their story. That was the key to unlock the rest. You care about these people. This is a real story here, a real character arc, a real family to care about at the center of everything. Because of them, everything that happens makes it more intense.

Q: Were there incidents from your own childhood that informed the plot?

A: Watching “The Creature From the Black Lagoon” was a formative experience as a kid. I was drawn to writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Daphne du Maurier, Ray Bradbury. My mom was an English teacher. I gravitated toward things that were spookier — morbid sometimes. There was something specifically about the water (that was scary). I remember seeing “Jaws” when I was a kid and being scared of the swimming pool even though I knew there was nothing down there, but the lights are off and you can’t see anything, so you think (the shark from) “Jaws” is rising from the depths to get you. Kids with big imaginations can get scared easily. I was always scaring myself.

(READ MORE: Bruce, the last ‘Jaws’ shark, docks at the Academy Museum)

Q: You have credits as a writer, director and producer. What do you consider your strength?

A: I see myself as a filmmaker or creator. It’s kind of more about what hat do you have to wear on the basis of a project. If my friend is doing a podcast, I’ll be a producer and shepherd that along. If it’s an idea that came from your brain and you want to get it into other people’s brains, you have to write it.

Everything starts with the script. There’s no movie without a script, no actors, no nothing. That was my calling card, the key to opening doors. Writing scripts got me an agent and a manager. All along the way, I had been directing short films. I became a professional writer before I became a professional director, but I always knew I was a director and wanted to direct at a bigger level.

The short film “Night Swim” was the first project I sold to a studio. Selling “Night Swim” allowed me to quit my day job (as a substitute teacher). It didn’t get made for another five years, but along the way one thing begets the next. I adapted another short film for Amblin Entertainment. I was hired to adapt a novel. I was hired to do another rewrite of a short story. You do good work and build a professional reputation.

Q: How do you manage working in Hollywood and living in Chattanooga?

A: It’s interesting. As a writer, honestly nothing has changed about my life since moving here (three years ago). If anything, I have more time to write, and I feel like it’s a very conducive place for that. It’s slower, simpler, less noisy. It’s an interesting change of pace for me.

It didn’t take me out of the industry. It didn’t get me out of any jobs. People live everywhere. When you have to travel, you travel. I make my work trips and come home.

I spent a lot of the past year away from home because the movie was filmed in Los Angeles. That aspect has been hard. It’s nice being in Chattanooga when I’m not in LA. It feels like you get a break. It feels like you really get a reset.

Q: It’s practically a given that horror films become franchises. Do you see a sequel in the future for “Night Swim”?

A: I definitely do. I won’t give too much away, but there is an Easter egg in the movie that sets up where I would like to go with the sequel. For a shrewd viewer, they may see a setup that’s alluded to in the movie that I’d love to explore more.

(READ MORE: Five classic horror films that didn’t get much Oscar acclaim)

Q: What are your plans for the premiere?

A: The movie opens Jan. 5th weekend. The previews start Thursday night on the 4th. I would love to see the AMC Majestic downtown packed out with friends and family.

(READ MORE: AMC to charge more for good seats in movie theaters)

I will be at the (Hollywood) premiere with my whole family on the 3rd. On the 5th, we fly back to Tennessee. Throughout the weekend, I’ll be popping by different screenings. I’ll probably be at the AMC 12 downtown and I might come by the AMC 18, too, in East Ridge. I’ll be popping into multiple screenings and interacting with the audience.

Contact Lisa Denton at ldenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6281.