Before the awards-winner Buster’s Mal Heart (2016), starring Rami Malek, the acclaimed Birds of Paradise (2021) with Jacqueline Bisset, and the segment “Mother’s Day” in horror anthology Holidays (2016), writer and director Sarah Adina Smith debuted with a feature film called The Midnight Swim (2014).
In the movie, when June’s mother goes mysteriously missing after diving in Spirit Lake, she and her sisters travel home to put her affairs in order. June, a mentally unstable documentary filmmaker, records the experience with her two half-sisters Annie and Isa. Their mother, an ecologist who was campaigning to preserve Spirit Lake, is gone but always present. As they settle back into her house, Isa takes up with June’s ex-crush Josh while several strange occurrences happen after they jokingly summon the ghost of a local legend. As the questions mount, the family begins to unravel and June finds herself drawn deeper into the true mystery of the lake.
This mystic and spiritual horror drama is starring Lindsay Burdge, Jennifer Lafleur, Aleksa Palladino, Beth Grant, Ross Partridge, Michelle Hutchison, Shirley Venard, Kaya Sakrak, Ebru Caparti, and Traci Dinwiddie.
The Midnight Swim (2014) had its world premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 27, 2014. After that, it had an extensive festivals run including Lund Fantastisk Film Festival, Monsters of Film, AFI Fest, Denver International Film Festival, Cucalorus Film Festival, Imagine Film Festival, Sarasota Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival, Berkshire International Film Festival, and Oak Cliff Film Festival, where it achieved several nominations and awards. On June 26, 2015, it had a limited theatrical release.
Now, Yellow Veil Pictures has ready a re-release of the movie and has scheduled it to come out on video-on-demand and as a special Blu-ray set that will include Sarah Adina Smith’s short film The Sirens (2009), the never-before-seen short The Phoenix and The Turtle (2007), special featurette The Three Sisters: A look back at The Midnight Swim (2014), and a booklet featuring never before seen The Midnight Swim (2014) artwork drawn by Sarah Adina Smith, and essays from critic Justine Smith and culture writer Nicole Cliffe.
The collector’s Blu-ray is coming out on January 25, 2022, and it’s available on pre-order here.
Watch the trailer for The Midnight Swim (2014).
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