Swim (2021)
Plot
A family trapped in a hurricane-flooded vacation rental must keep going further and further up into the massive house as the water becomes infested with sharks.
Over the many years I’ve been reviewing horror films, I could always rely on SyFy (formerly The Sci-Fi Channel) to churn out a requisite number of killer shark films per year, usually with the help of the mockbuster specialist studio The Asylum. But since SyFy have either reigned in or fully stopped their in-house production of original movies, The Asylum have switched to Tubi for continue their assault on good filmmaking and seem to have ramped up their output. Swim was the first collaboration between The Asylum and Tubi so I was hoping for something different – who was I kidding? Despite Swim sounding like a more grounded offering where the sharks were just normal and not toxic waste spewing freaks, zombies or ghosts, I do really wish I hadn’t bothered because it’s the same old, same old from The Asylum.
The studio was known for making cheap knock-off versions of bigger budgeted films – mockbusters as they’re known – and whilst Swim isn’t a mockbuster, there’s something vaguely similar to Crawl from 2019; just switch out the alligators for sharks. There’s also a whiff of Sharknado about this whole thing, taking one of the more famous scenes from the film and minus all of the cheese that came with it. Something about Swim’s whole setup seems a little weird to begin with. This isn’t The Requin where the holiday villa floats away into the sea during a storm. The building here is high above sea level to begin with – granted the basement can flood at the best of times but even so, it’d take a catastrophic rise in sea level to get to the levels it does later in the film. Plus, the fact the characters don’t take the first opportunity to get away really makes me question some of the narrative choices here. Yes, there’s a storm but if the sea is rising that quickly, my first logical thought would be to get as far away from it as possible. It’s nit-picking but these sort of things take you out of a film which is supposed to be building up a believable world for the events to occur in.
Swim doesn’t feel the urgency to get to the action, which is clearly all anyone is watching this for, taking its time with the Samson family and their issues to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for character building but the script is unnatural, really forcing some poor dialogue onto some clueless actors. Lead actress Jennifer Field has this same gormless open-mouthed expression on her face all throughout the running time; it’s a good job that she’s attractive because her acting leaves no impression whatsoever. There’s no way she should playing a mother, especially when the ‘kids’ look as old as she is and there’s a forty-year-old playing a ninety plus man. On the plus side, the female cast is attractive and bikini-clad for most of the running time, though you’d question the logic of why they’re wearing them when it’s constantly overcast and raining. Swim has been very miscast, but I guess that’s the least of the film’s problems.
Everyone you expect to be attacked and killed is attacked and killed and in an order you’d expect too. There aren’t many characters in here to begin with and some of the family are clearly wearing plot armour (sorry middle aged white men, you’re yesterdays news now) so the options are limited when it comes to who dies and when to add some tension and sense of threat to the film. The shark looks terrible, not that I expected anything different, and suffers from Asylum’s usual shape and colour shifting nonsense, changing size and ability with whatever the current scene needs it to do. Attacks are swift, usually off-camera, and consist of a little red water and some sound effects. Hardly worth the effort.
It’s probably best for you not to worry too much about the rest of the special effects. There is supposedly a storm raging and sea levels are rising yet the stock footage of the sea front condos looks unharmed by any of it. The inability of the script to decide how deep the water is inside the house or how big the rooms are at any one point is frustrating. In one scene, a group of characters escape from the basement up some stairs, despite the water level being significantly lower, yet in the next breath the shark is battering on the door trying to get out. If this was Land Shark then I’d be able to accept that logic! Likewise, during earlier scenes of characters wading out into the sea in waist-deep water, the consistency with the next shots of the same characters treading ocean in much deeper water really smacks home. It’s basic filmmaking to keep things consistent but these inconsistencies in the continuity of shots become more of a focus to the viewer. Sort of like a game of “who can spot the next glaring mistake?” rather than watching the film for entertainment purposes. Like the rest of the film, the dedication to this specific aspect of filmmaking is utterly soulless and by-the-numbers.
Final Verdict
Swim is such a homogenised film experience that its difficult to explain. Clearly everyone is doing a job, be it the actors, directors, special effects team, etc. but there’s such a lack of ambition, drive and passion behind this that you get the feeling they were all looking towards their next project and payday when they were putting this together. Swim isn’t funny, it’s not satire or spoof, it’s not controversial, it’s not genre-breaking and it’s not very exciting or interesting. Just why does it exist?
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Swim Director(s): Jared Cohn Writer(s): Anthony C. Ferrante Actor(s): Joey Lawrence, Jennifer Field, Andrew Lauer, Brett Hargrave, Daniel Grogan, Addison Bowman, Rib Hillis, Timothy Jones Duration: 87 mins |  |
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