Night Swim Producer Reveals Why Wyatt Russell Was Perfect for Horror Movie

Night Swim, the new horror movie from filmmaker Bryce McGuire, centers on a young man who has lost his athletic career due to an injury, and who moves to the country with the hope that he can somehow bounce back and reclaim his career. Things...don't go great. The movie stars Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) and Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin) in lead roles, and according to one of the film's producers, Wyatt Russell's own personal story -- and his short career as a professional athlete -- definitely worked to his advantage when they were casting the film.

We asked producer Ryan Turek whether Russell's hockey background played into what made him a good choice for the role. Turek said that he didn't know as much about the hockey as he did about Russell's baseball background, but that in any case, the athletics definitely lent his performance a weight that's hard to argue with.

"That was the great thing, is that he was bringing his own experience to the table and his own dreams," Turek explained. "The whole movie is about this guy who was thinking he was goign on one path and then got sidelined, so it was fun. And Kerry had swimming experience, and that was exciting to hear because she was like, 'I can't wait to go in the pool, and we were like, 'Great!'"

Based on the acclaimed 2014 short film by Rod Blackhurst and Bryce McGuire, Night Swim stars Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) as Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, who moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Oscar nominee Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin), teenage daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) and young son Elliot (Gavin Warren, Fear the Walking Dead). Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home's shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home's past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror.

Night Swim hits theaters on January 5, 2024.