Swims on Screen: The Midnight Swim (2014)

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The Midnight Swim, directed by Sarah Adina Smith, is the beautifully shot story of three sisters returned home in the wake of their mother's death.  Their family home is on the shore of the 'Spirit Lake', which their mother had campaigned for as a conservationist and dived in as a scientist and scuba diver - and where she has disappeared presumed drowned. 

Much of the story unfolds in and around the lake, including a pleasingly spooky/witchy undercurrent based on folklore about seven drowned sisters and the spirit of one of them calling swimmers to danger and death. It is certainly not a horror film though, so much as a well observed tale of family dynamics and bereavement set against the background of what is apparently West Lake Okoboji in the Iowa Great Lakes.

The mother was also something of a mystic, singing nursery rhymes about 'lake fairies' and reciting lines from Wordsworth to illustrate her beliefs in reincarnation: 'Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea/ Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore'.

At the end of the credits the director dedicates the film to 'my mother, who taught me to swim'.





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