Day 315: The Midnight Swim

This is sort of a slow burn horror that doesn't have a horror ending in the slightest. I saw it as part of my Spooktoberthon last year.

The Midnight Swim is about three daughters who return to the family lake house after their mother vanishes while diving one night. This is technically a found footage movie (even though the end doesn't make sense as such) where one of the daughters is a documentary film maker trying to understand why her mother vanished. There are birds throwing themselves against the lake house and an old legend of a ghost on the lake that the ladies try to invoke. There is some drama, too, as the ex boyfriend of the eldest sister starts hooking up with the youngest sister.

This is a very gentle movie, pretty much a drama. If it weren't for the dread hanging over the whole thing of why the mother vanished in the lake. The rhythms are that of a horror movie but the ending is the furthest thing from horror you can imagine (and maybe either silly or beautiful depending on your cynicism level). The director, Sarah Adina Smith, made Buster's Mal Heart this year which is supposed to be genre-bending in its own way, too.

I say this barely qualifies as horror, if it even does at all. But is worth watching.